Aug

25

Book ‘Em: Stage Surprise.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

August 25, 2008 |

stage1.jpgThere’s a saying in show business, “Never work with children or animals”. The obvious reason is that, given their cuteness, children and animals will upstage almost any actor. The less obvious reason for not working with children, though, might be their parents. You know the type: excessively controlling, overprotective, and convinced their children aren’t just the most talented individuals in show business but the best thing to ever happen to the planet. Lisa Gee is not one of those parents. If anything she’s the complete polar opposite of those parents, a woman who, like almost any parent, is certainly proud of her daughter and convinced that, yes, her daughter does certainly seem to be talented, but at the same time not blind to the fact that she’s not exactly an objective judge. This humility, this awareness that a lot of parents would be just like her in the same situation, as well as the fact that many of us look at children performing on television or even on stage and wonder how the heck they got there, makes Stage Mum a fun read. It’s more than that, though. Even from the beginning Gee tells her daughter Dora that, even though trying out for a part in a stage play (they don’t even know what the play is, much less the part) might seem like a fun thing to do, chances are she won’t get picked. Gee tells her daughter this repeatedly, even after their second audition. Her realistic attitude is, she explains, part of her history:

I am emphatically–and by choice–not a fantasist. Having been obsessed with Champion the Wonder Horse, Dr Who, and The New Avengers during my impressionable early years, by the age of eight I’d moved on from pretending to be a pony to daydreaming up an entire alternative existence in which I led a team of international troubleshooting detectives called The Black Cats.

The book’s only real problem is that the chapters are too long. Chapter One, “Let’s Start At The Very Beginning”, runs to more than sixty pages. On the one hand it captures Gee’s breathless excitement at the strange series of events that led to the book, but a story like this really should be cut into smaller chunks. Also, a few pictures would have been nice, although Gee often includes witty descriptions, such as a board room that looked as if “it wanted to be a lounge when it grew up”. Part confession, part memoir (she was also getting married at the same time her daughter was a rising star), part cautionary tale, Gee’s story is one that’s enjoyable because, even though we’ve all dealt with one of those parents, she’s average, ordinary, and, in spite of having been through this extraordinary experience, she never loses her sense of surprise or humor. Admittedly she does become the sort of parent who screams, “COME BACK HERE OR YOU’RE NOT GETTING AN AGENT!” but in her case it’s an empty threat, and she’s very well aware of how ridiculous a thing it is to say. Is she living through her daughter? Perhaps, but her daughter was really too young to understand what a huge thing it is to be picked out of thousands to appear in a major role in a big budget stage production of The Sound of Music. Someday, I hope, her daughter will thank her for providing an adult’s perspective.


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