by Lisa Gee
On the 14th, another email from Jo. This one informed us that they were now fully cast. An updated team list was attached, with two new names: Georgia Russell (Louisa) and Grace Vance (Brigitta) added to the green team.
Meanwhile, in the two-month hiatus between the casting of the von Trapp children and the start of rehearsals, my curiosity about The Sound of Music morphed into a full-scale research project. I surfed the web for any information I could find about the film, the stage show and the original true story of the von Trapps. I ordered The Trapp Family Singers – Maria von Trapp’s autobiography – from www.abebooks.co.uk. A very cheap and musty thirty-eight-year-old Fontana paperback arrived a few days later. It said ‘The Sound of Music’ in big pink, lime green, turquoise and orange gothic lettering above the author’s name, which was much smaller and in a very plain black upper case type. Then – much larger – ‘Julie Andrews’, followed, in fluffy pink italics, by ‘stars in the 20th Century Fox Film based on the touching romantic story of THE TRAPP FAMILY SINGERS’. The confection was completed by an extravagantly lime-green-bordered circular still from the film showing Julie as Maria, standing in front of a lake looking winsomely lovely and appropriately chaste in pale aqua chiffon and a straw hat.
I opened the book and browsed the foreword. Maria writes that her book is ‘introduced as a canticle of love and gratitude to the Heavenly Father in His Divine Providence’. Blimey, I thought. This all sounds a bit pious. Then I engaged my brain. The real-life Maria was training to be a nun. Of course she’d be pious. What did I expect?
Certainly not what I went on to read, which was a story that was, if anything, more astonishing than the familiar movie version. Maria describes herself as the ‘black sheep’ of the abbey where she was a novice nun, always getting told off for whistling, sliding down banisters and indulging in an early Mitteleuropean form of parkour, jumping over chimney pots on the flat roof of the abbey’s school wing. She had just finished training as a teacher when she was packed off to Captain von Trapp’s place, not as governess to his entire brood, but as tutor to one of his children also named Maria, who was poorly following bouts of scarlet fever and influenza.
Von Trapp was shortly expected to announce his engagement to a Princess Yvonne: the pair had been discussing marriage for three years. Fantastic! thought Maria – just like in the movie – the children will have a new mother. But the princess shocked Maria by blithely telling her that the children would all be sent off to boarding school as she was marrying Georg, not them. Then she explained that Georg was falling in love with Maria because she was kind to his children – but these feelings were of no consequence. Maria, feeling thoroughly compromised, tried to leave, but Princess Yvonne got a priest to persuade her that it was God’s will that she should stay at least until she was due to return to the abbey. The princess left, and in the following weeks Maria did her best both to distance herself from the captain and persuade him to get himself properly engaged as soon as possible. Then he left, putting a completely unqualified Maria in charge of his household, as his housekeeper had broken her leg while on a visit to her sister and was unable to return.
Every day Maria dutifully sent brief letters to the captain telling him that children, house and farm were fine. Eventually, as the time for her return to the convent approached, she added a PS asking when he would get engaged. He sent her a joking reply to which she fired off an angry response by registered return. Von Trapp was about to propose to the princess when the letter arrived. Reading it, he realised that he could not marry Princess Yvonne as he was in love with Maria, so he broke off their relationship and returned home to Salzburg, where he hid in his study, ostensibly writing his memoirs.
A few days before Maria was due to leave, she noticed, from the top of the ladder she was balancing on whilst spring-cleaning a huge crystal chandelier, the three youngest von Trapp children disappearing into their father’s study. They burst out again shortly afterwards, and yelled at her, ‘Father says he doesn’t know whether you like him at all!’ Maria – concentrating on the chandelier, because this was the first time she’d ever washed one – replied that of course she liked him. The kids dashed back to their father with the news.
Later that evening, Maria was arranging some flowers when the captain came over to her and said ‘That was really very nice of you.’ Maria, who couldn’t work out what he was talking about, was astonished to discover that she had, inadvertently, accepted a proposal of marriage. She said she couldn’t get married as she was going to be a nun and it wasn’t possible to do both. Then, as Georg was upset, she suggested that she ask the mistress of novitiates what she should do and promptly escaped back to the convent.
Her stay there lasted only a few hours. The mistress of novices consulted the mother superior. The mother superior summoned the whole community for a meeting and a prayer, and they decided that it was the will of God that Maria should marry the captain. Maria doesn’t indicate whether God might have wanted her to do that partly to relieve the convent of a nun who spent her time jumping over chimney pots, sliding down banisters and whistling inappropriately. All she tells us is that, once she realised that she had no alternative but to serve her Maker ‘whole-heartedly and cheerfully’ as commanded by the mother superior, she dawdled reluctantly and miserably back to the captain’s house, where she found him waiting for her. At which point she burst into floods of tears and explained, ‘Th-they s-s-said I have to m-m-m-marry you.’
The wedding took place on 26 November 1927. There followed healthy camping holidays, normal family life, two more children (both girls, so the boys were now outnumbered seven to two), loss of the family fortune and the start of their singing career before some eleven years later, a few months after the Anschluss, the family – including a pregnant Maria – had to flee Austria. It was becoming impossible to resist the Nazis, and once von Trapp had refused a commission in the Ostmark navy; Rupert, the eldest son – a newly qualified doctor – had said nein danke to the offer of a senior medical job at a Viennese hospital (there were lots of vacancies because the Jewish doctors had been sent to concentration camps); and the family had turned down an invitation to sing for Hitler at his birthday celebrations, it wasn’t safe to stay.
Stateless, penniless and homeless, they fetched up in the US, where, relying on the kindness of strangers, they learned English, sang their way round the country, and Maria gave birth to her third child – a boy this time – who brought the total to ten. Then their visitors’ visas ran out and they had to leave for Europe. On their return, seven months later, so delighted was Maria to be back in the US that instead of saying what she was supposed to say when the immigration officer asked her how long she intended to stay in the country – the correct answer was six months, as she and her family were again on visitors’ visas – she ‘blurted out, “Oh, I am so glad to be here – I never want to leave again!”’
As a result, the entire family – except for Rupert, who, as a doctor, had been granted an immigration visa – were shipped off to jail on Ellis Island.
Several years and much-water-under-the-bridge later, the family bought a rundown farm in Vermont and settled there. Today, the Trapp Family Lodge – now a ninety-three room, 2,700-acre resort, where holidaymakers can enjoy healthy outdoor activities and musical recreations, spend an afternoon with a pastry chef and even buy a luxurious villa – is still family-run.
Browsing the Trapp Family Lodge website, a thought sprang into my head. It was mid-August, and we had a couple of weeks to kill before Dora was due back at school. We couldn’t afford to visit the Lodge, but if the flights were cheap enough, and I could find somewhere inexpensive to stay, I could take Dora for a short trip to Salzburg, where the movie was filmed and where the von Trapps really lived before they fled and their home was requisitioned by Himmler. It could be a mother–daughter bonding weekend (Laurie didn’t want to come) and we could do all those tacky Sound of Music sightseeing things that I’d turn my semi-cultured and generally i
ntellectually snobbish nose up at under other circumstances. But this time, I could justify and enjoy doing them because they would count as research and not mere time-wasting. I could help Dora learn about some of the true story behind the musical she was soon to start rehearsing, thus ensuring that it would be an Educational Experience as well as lots of fun.
Our first official Sound of Music event took place on 24 August. It was a costume fitting. I took Dora to the Cambridge Theatre in Covent Garden, where a young woman called Katie shepherded us up several flights of stairs to a small office. In the office was a smiley and efficient-looking woman called Lynette, who had a tape measure draped round her neck, curly greying hair and the kind of direct gaze that has you sized up the moment it settles on you and made me wonder whether she would actually need to use the tape measure. She whipped it off and applied it to every inch of Dora while asking me about shoe sizes. ‘She has very wide feet,’ I told her, having just, in an unaccustomed feat of pre-planning, taken Dora out to buy her school shoes for the following term – size 12½ H.
‘How many different costumes will they have?’ I asked.
‘Six,’ Lynette replied.
‘That’ll keep you busy,’ I said, trying to imagine exactly how much work would be involved in sorting out at least fifty-four outfits and then adjusting them as the children changed shape and size over the next few months.
‘And we have to do the adults too.’
Dora’s contract arrived the day before we were due to head off to Salzburg. It was all very straightforward: she would be paid £17.50 per rehearsal – up to a maximum of £100 per week – and £35 per performance. I was shocked. Thirty years previously, my sister Nikki had earned £40 a day being a fish finger. I knew – from friends in the business – that theatre pay was ludicrously low, but I had imagined that with a show this high-profile, the kids would be paid at least £50. As Dora didn’t have an agent, I thought I’d better ring Jo to check whether the amount was at all negotiable. ‘No,’ she informed me firmly. ‘It would be a nightmare situation with this many children to have some earning more than others.’ Still, although it seemed like peanuts to me, to a child too young to be getting regular pocket money, it felt like all her birthdays had come at once.
‘How much money will I get?’ Dora asked me. ‘Will it be enough to buy a bike with gears?’
I assured her that it would.
‘And Heelys?’
‘Hmm. Maybe.’
More disappointing was the news on travel expenses. Those of us living in London would receive ten quid a week. I did my sums. This could, I worked out, almost cover the costs while Dora was performing, so long as I hung around while she was on stage and dragged her back on the tube late at night, which was clearly not practical given that she was six, there was a long, poorly lit walk at the other end and it would be winter. And then there was getting her to the rehearsals five days a week for six weeks. Ten pounds would only cover a third of our actual costs during that period. And – living nearer the centre of London than most of the other kids – we were comparatively well off. Unnecessarily stingy, I thought, given the amount of money the company stood to make on this production. Thank goodness Ken Livingstone had introduced free travel for under elevens and both Dora’s dance teachers (she was doing Grade 1 ballet and fun, express-yourself-with-friends general dance) had agreed that I only had to pay for the classes she could attend while she was doing the show.
It was also made abundantly clear that the company reserved ‘the right to terminate the contract’ with two weeks’ notice if the children behaved badly or unprofessionally or grew too much, if their voices broke or for any other reason. ‘It means,’ another parent later explained to me drily, ‘that they can do what they like and we have no rights at all.’ The producers had us firmly not by the short and curlies, but by the place we keep our love for our children and our desire to see them happy. After they’d worked so hard for so long, done so well and were so excited, who among us was going to pull our kids from the show just because we’d end up a few hundred quid out of pocket? Especially as the money would be siphoned slowly and almost unnoticeably out of our bank accounts over a six-month period. And we were, I found out, being better treated than parents with kids in other shows: many companies don’t give parents any contribution whatsoever towards travel expenses. After all, they reason, they don’t cover the adult performers’ costs. Adult performers, however, aren’t required by law to be dropped off and picked up by a total idiot who not only isn’t being paid at all for ensuring that actors essential to the show’s success arrive at the stage door on time, well fed and in a fit state to play their part, but is actually forking out for the privilege.
Still, I’d save some money on Dora’s after-school activities and I’d hold off signing her up for more swimming tuition and piano lessons. Anyway, there was no point in letting this rampant exploitation of my parental goodwill and excitement ruin that excitement. Especially when Dora and I were about to head off to Salzburg for a three-day multi-sensory Sound of Music experience.
Our flight was due to leave from Stansted at 18.30 on Wednesday 31 August. Laurie dropped us at the airport, now wishing that he was coming with us. Several days earlier, I’d visited TK Maxx with a tape measure and invested £11 in an oblong grey rucksack that just fitted the new, terrorist-induced hand baggage size restrictions and bought Dora a Scooby-Doo backpack as her purple pull-along case was slightly too big.
Although our flight was delayed, and the overpriced cheese toasties the airline served tasted like they’d been made from cereal packets and flour-and-water glue by enthusiastic five-year-olds, the journey was uneventful. We arrived at our hotel – the Kolpinghaus Salzburg – just before midnight.
We woke early the next morning. It was grey and drizzly, but we stuck to our plan and caught a bus to visit the surprise fountains and then the zoo at Hellbrunn, which was enormous, if damp, fun. I was particularly taken with the hydro-powered automata – small moving tableaux of workshops with mechanical potters potting, forests with woodcutters chopping wood, and one enormous, bustling cityscape – as well as the golden crown that danced on a jet of water and the deer’s head with spouting nose and antlers. Dora’s favourite bit was feeding the alpaca and getting gently butted by a very small but very determined goat in the petting zoo. I think she spotted a kindred spirit.
The sky brightened and we returned to the hotel tired, happy, but also hungry. We ate a hearty dinner and retired to bed. Dora decided she couldn’t possibly sleep on the other side of the room as it was too far away from me and she was lonely. She climbed into my single bed and snuggled me so ferociously that I was crushed cartoon-flat against the wall.
Next morning, I experienced a sudden-onset stomach bug, which ruined my breakfast but, thanks to some rapid evasive action on my part, no one else’s. We were due for the highlight of our trip that morning – The Original Sound of Music Tour – but once I’d made it to our bedroom, it was clear that the only trip I would be taking was a rapid stagger between bed and en suite followed by a slow crawl back again. Fortunately, the Kolpinghaus staff helped. They whisked Dora on to the final day of their summer childcare programme, draped her in a gigantic bright orange t-shirt and introduced her to the joys of graffiti art – toxic fumes and all. At lunchtime, by which point I could stand, I tiptoed fragilely downstairs to discover her, with the assistance of two much bigger boys, putting the final touches to a large sheet of jagged-edged metal, spray-painted the same bright orange as Dora’s t-shirt, with my name zigzagged across it and surrounded by rather wobbly hearts.
‘We’re allowed to take it home,’ she told me, proudly and only slightly addled from the fumes. I thanked the boys for helping her and said that, regretfully, we couldn’t, as it wouldn’t fit on the aeroplane.
Meanwhile, the hotel staff had also rebooked our Sound of Music tour for that afternoon. Fortunately for my stomach, the front seats of the coach were free. ‘Ah, and you must be Gr
etl,’ boomed the large and very blond tour guide, as Dora climbed the coach steps. ‘No, Marta, actually,’ I intervened, before the stage mother in me took over and explained, entirely unnecessarily, when and where and in which production she was due to be Marta. Essentially, I kvelled. Kvelling, for the uninitiated, is an important part of being Jewish – especially if you happen, like me, to be a Jewish mother. To kvell (Yiddish) is to burst (or beam) with pride and pleasure, usually over your children’s (or grandchildren’s) achievements. ‘My son, the doctor.’ That sort of thing. The Sound of Music provided me – and the whole of Dora’s extended family – with a fantastic kvelling opportunity. By the end of her run, it had gone so far that when Laurie’s uncle and aunt went to play bridge with a couple of my father’s friends they were all at it.
The Original Sound of Music Tour was slightly blink-and-you’ve-missed-it, omigod-is-there-time-to-get-to-the-loo-and-buy-Dora-an-ice-cream-before-the-coach-sets-off? but was lots of fun. We drove past the Mirabell Gardens where the cast were filmed skipping along and singing ‘Do-Re-Mi’, then hopped off the coach to peek at the back of Leopoldskron Castle, where Julie Andrews and company fell out of their boat and Kym Karath, who played Gretl, nearly drowned. We hopped back on again and were whisked off to Schloss Hellbrunn, where we were shown the summerhouse in which Liesl and Rolf sang and danced ‘Sixteen, Going on Seventeen’, and which has been closed to visitors ever since an elderly woman tried to recreate the young things’ leaps from bench to bench, fell off and broke her leg. Which was one better than Charmian Carr – Liesl in the movie – who, when she fell off, only sprained her ankle and broke a pane of glass (you can, if you watch closely, just spot the make-up-covered bandage on her dancing leg).
