Stage Mum (19 page)

Tuesday, 22 October. The first technical rehearsal. We stuffed Dora’s backpack with colouring things, a book to read and a pad to draw on. As usual, I read Harry Potter to her on the train – we were now on to
… and the Chamber of Secrets
. When we arrived at Oxford Circus, we took the first of many walks down Argyll Street, past the front of the theatre – which now, as well as the massive
Sound of Music
sign, was also displaying larger-than-lifesize photos of Connie Fisher, Simon Shepherd and Lesley Garrett – turned left past Café Uno on to Marlborough Street, where, between the newsstand and Café Libre, we found the Palladium stage door. The gates were
open,
revealing a couple of gigantic wheelie bins, some steps and a slope down to the stage door itself. Kids and parents were milling around, chatting excitedly. Dora clung to my hand, temporarily shy and uncertain. I looked around and thought about how I’d be spending a lot of time standing here over the next few months. It wasn’t so bad at that point, just before one o’clock on an October afternoon, but I could imagine that the wheelie bins would provide meagre shelter on a wet and freezing winter’s night.

As I was a ‘new mum’, Wendy, whose daughter Christine had previously worked there in
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
, and was now the Louisa in Mittens, had helpfully emailed me a warning of exactly how not-nice the experience could be:

The Palladium drop-offs and pick-ups are even less parent-friendly than the Jerwood. We have to stand outside the stage door (by the lovely wheelie bins) and not set foot inside. There is an outside loo, which is usually okay for an emergency! If you’re collecting Dora by car, beware the wardens, who magically appear at the end of the show and do slap a ticket on any car parked on yellow or zigzag lines.

Meanwhile, as many of us parents who could manage to – in other words, those of us without full-time jobs or lots of other children – arranged to get together on the Wednesday afternoon for a treat. We all felt that we’d been working hard to support our kids and deserved a bit of fun. We hadn’t booked anything in advance, because there was a good chance that the rehearsal times would, at the last minute, be changed and we’d have ended up forking out for tickets which we couldn’t use as we suddenly had to pick our kids up halfway through the show we’d paid to watch. After much discussion –
Avenue Q
? No matinee on Wednesdays.
Mary Poppins
? No, those of us who hadn’t yet seen it wanted to watch it with the kids – a herd of us, eight mums, plus Caroline Riley’s teenage brother, sat in a long row to
watch
Cabaret
. It was darkly gripping, beautifully designed, choreographed and performed, shocking, sexy and included a lot more nudity than
The Sound of Music
. I felt embarrassed for Caroline’s brother watching it from the middle of eight mothers.

Dora found the technical rehearsals actually rather fun. She was especially excited about the ‘Lonely Goatherd’ routine, which involved the Gretls being pushed on to the stage in a wheelbarrow: this was particularly enjoyable when there were two Gretls being rehearsed simultaneously. ‘It was
so
funny mummy. Alicia was in the wheelbarrow and Frank [Thompson, the children’s director] carried me in next to her. I think we should do it like that all the time!’ In fact, in Dora’s opinion, the whole performance would be massively improved if there were twin Gretls on stage throughout the show – or, ideally, all four of them performing at once. She also enjoyed bounding across the sofa during ‘Do-Re-Mi’: ‘Sophie [Bould – Liesl] and Connie were supposed to carry me, but that was too hard, so Sophie puts me on one side of the sofa and Connie picks me up and puts me down at the other end’, and being given a piggyback by Sophie when they’re playing cowboys and Indians, wearing play clothes made of curtains in the scene where their father meets them for the first time on his return from Vienna with the baroness.

But, being six, by ten o’clock at night she was over the top and exhausted. So she quickly settled into the routine of coming out of the Palladium, climbing into the car and babbling out her news which was, in line with Emily Dickinson’s famous dictum, generally told slant. Because I was really curious to know, I would gently ask a couple of questions, trying to tease out exactly what she was talking about. This would exasperate her (why didn’t I get it from her first telling, which was, to her mind, completely clear?) and provoke a brief but intense tantrum, at the conclusion of which she’d pass out. When we arrived home I was usually able to find a parking place pretty close to the house, but even so, I couldn’t carry her from the
car
to her bed, so I had to wake her up again. She often lost it and, frankly, who could blame her?

I was also pretty tired by this point, but usually managed to stay calm, and not do anything to up the ante. Even so, it was hard to get the right balance – and I can’t claim that I always did – and to judge when and where to draw the line. It’s easy to see why children who do this kind of thing can end up being over-indulged. Even though Dora was having the time of her life, I certainly felt there were moments when I needed to compensate for the pressure she was undoubtedly under: moments when I let behaviour that in other circumstances would have been completely unacceptable pass without comment, because she was so far past her sell-by date that there was no point trying to discipline her and I didn’t really feel it was her fault anyway. There were, however, also moments when – like any child – she took full advantage of the extra latitude she was allowed.

Although the kids were now being taken out to restaurants to eat between sessions, we were asked to send them in on the Saturday of the technical rehearsals with a packed tea, as they still had so much to get through. As
The Sound of Music
was a period piece, Jo warned us, the boys would, one by one, be whisked off to the wigs department for a short back and sides. There was still a possibility that the girls who didn’t have one might need to have a fringe cut in. If Dora had to have one, I’d have to grin and bear it, but I really hoped she wouldn’t. I didn’t fancy going through that annoying, hairclip-laden process of growing it out over the next year.

On the Saturday, Jo also reminded us that although it was all very exciting, the theatre was a place of work. She’d had a couple of complaints about the children’s behaviour. Could we please, she asked, ‘remind the older ones to set an example and the younger ones to do their best to listen’. And wished/instructed us to have ‘a restful weekend’.

It wasn’t only the children that hadn’t been behaving. My
previously
reliable iBook had, for the past couple of weeks, also been playing up: freezing in a way that the operating system was, according to the marketing blurb, supposed to prevent. So, sadly, because Laurie was out entertaining other children, Dora was forced to give up part of her restful Sunday and accompany me to Brent Cross Shopping Centre, where someone at the Apple Store, whose job title was ‘genius’, would use technical brilliance to stun me by fixing my computer within the twenty-minute time slot the Apple website had allotted me.

The sign in the window said, ‘At 4 p.m. today, Julie Andrews Edwards will be signing copies of her new children’s book
The Great American Mousical
.’

We had parked up with minutes to spare before my 1.30 appointment and I’d made Dora run out of the multistorey car park into the shopping centre and walk down the escalator to ensure that we’d arrive not on time, but a bit early. She had complained, with some justification. As we sped up to W.H. Smith, I noticed a couple of queue control barriers outside and a few people sitting by the shop window, waiting. Must be a celebrity book signing, I thought, skidding to a halt to investigate, even though I suspected either Jamie Oliver or Jordan, neither of whom were of the remotest interest.

But I was wrong.

I blinked. Julie Andrews? At Brent Cross Shopping Centre? This afternoon? Now, I’m not usually remotely interested in meeting famous people, and wouldn’t go out of my way to do so. But there are exceptions – and right then, with Dora about to be in
The Sound of Music
, Julie Andrews was definitely one of them.

‘Do you want to stay and say hello to Julie Andrews?’

‘Who’s Julieandrews?’

‘Maria in
The Sound of Music
film, Mary Poppins in
Mary Poppins
. And in
The Princess Diaries
.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She’ll be here. At four o’clock. We’ll have to buy her book.’

‘Can we do it now?’

‘No. I have to get my computer fixed first. Besides which, I don’t want to sit in a queue for over two hours just to get a book signed.’

‘I want to.’

‘Well, I have to get my computer fixed.’

‘Awww.’

We reached the Apple Store and I hopped on to one of the high stools at the Genius Bar and told someone I was there. Dora struggled up on to the stool next to mine and watched while I got my computer out. A couple of minutes later, my name was called, and a Genius with a crew cut and a goatee beard took my computer and listened while I told him what was wrong. Then he pressed a couple of keys on my computer that I should have been able to press by myself and said, ‘I think that should do it. If it doesn’t, bring it in again. All I had to do was empty the
and then clear the
.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

I’m usually fairly on the ball where computers are concerned, and if there hadn’t been someone tugging at my sleeve asking whether it was time to go and see Julieandrews yet, and telling me she was bored and hungry, I might have been able to make sense of what the ‘
’ and ‘
’ were so that I’d be able to empty and clear them myself in the future should the need ever arise. I was also rather hoping that it would take a bit longer to fix the laptop, so we wouldn’t have as long to wait in the Julie Andrews signing queue: I don’t enjoy window-shopping at the best of times, let alone with a bored six-year-old in tow asking repeatedly whether we could go and meet Julieandrews yet and demanding a good reason for my refusal to buy her a bag of chocolate-coated brazil nuts. Or almonds. Or raisins. She wasn’t fussy.