Free Stage Mum by Lisa Gee Page B

discovered that one of the grown-ups called Jo involved in the auditions – the one with long curly hair – was, in fact, Ros Jones, the children’s musical director, and that Andrew Lloyd Webber had never been there.
    Jo also told me that children in musicals have a fantastic time, but the parents don’t. We would have to drop our children off in good performing order and pick them up at unsocial times. There would be nowhere comfortable for us to wait – ‘I’ve had breast-feeding mums who’ve had to spend all evening sitting in the car with their babies, because there’s nowhere for them to go.’ Our kids would get tired and fractious and, because they had to be on their best behaviour around the theatre, would save all their tantrums for us. There was, in short, nothing in it for us. It would, Jo said cheerfully, be ‘hell’ for the parents. That was encouraging. As was the way she laughed at me like I’d said something hilarious when I suggested that being in
The Sound of Music
might be a one-off experience for Dora. Apparently, once they’ve done one show, children never want to stop. ‘Most of them end up at Sylvia Young’s,’ she explained briskly, as if it was an obvious case of predestination. ‘If not at the school itself, then at least with the agency.’ I thought back to the party of smiley uniformed children who’d arrived en masse at the final audition, chattering amongst themselves and looking, in my opinion, unnaturally keen and clean. In my head, I briefly superimposed Dora’s face on top of one of their bodies. It fitted, but my stomach rebelled. I had a visceral aversion to the idea of any stage school: the appalling children I was convinced would fetch up there, not to mention the uneven education I was sure they’d receive, one which, focusing on performance skills – singing, dancing and acting – at the expense of the academic subjects they’d need for real, adult life, would deprive them of a productive Plan B should – as was likely – their ambitions for a career in showbiz come to nowt.
    Then it was the summer holidays. Towards the end of July, the three of us spent a few days down in Bournemouth with Laurie’s mum, Lilli, admiring the beautiful job she’d done of displaying our wedding photos and watching the first
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?
– the BBC reality TV show through which Maria von Trapp was to be cast. This was, as far as we were concerned,
serious
reality TV. The outcome of the vote would affect our lives – well, Dora’s life, anyway. What if the public chose a Maria who loathed children? Someone who could act well enough to come across all maternal on the telly and onstage, but morphed into the Wicked Witch of the West the moment the lights went down? Or who was just grandly self-obsessed, humourless and slightly scary? Or who was so keen to demonstrate how much she
adored
children that she was loveyishly all over them in a yucky cheeks-covered-in-lipstick-kisses kind of way?
    We fell for Connie Fisher’s vivacity, determination and perfect-for-the-part voice from the first time we saw her twirling, eyebrows raised, in her tacky orange pseudo-dirndl (which was in programme four – we missed two and three). But we were also, Laurie in particular, quite taken with Siobhan, the tall and stunningly beautiful Maria with the heart-stopping voice who eventually came third. There were also a lot of wider-family debates about the merits of Abi – known as Tomboy Maria. Should we support our own and vote for her because she was also Jewish? Personally, I was against voting along sectarian lines.
    Dora loved watching. ‘I want to vote for
her
,’ she shrieked, every time any one of the girls sang a song, irrespective of whether they were even in tune. And I let her – at least once. That way, whoever ended up getting the gig, Dora could sidle up to her shyly at rehearsal and whisper innocently and truthfully, ‘I voted for you,’ which could