| Matilda the musical: Daughters on stage
From its opening comic number, Miracle ("My mummy says I'm a miracle / My daddy says I'm a special little guy"), the show is sensational and Matilda has the best tune of all. While Kerry and Sophia talk about leaving the show and moving on – at nearly 13, Kerry needs to pay more time in school, while Sophia is looking forward to going back to ballet, piano and violin lessons, and both have siblings who need more of their mothers' attention – you cannot help but wonder if these girls can fully grasp what they have been a part of, how incredibly fortunate they are. But it is impossible not to see how overpoweringly seductive and wonderful a life in showbusiness must look from where they are sitting right now – for the mothers, all but one of whom did some singing and dancing of their own as children, and perhaps the daughters, even if they aren't allowed sweets and ice cream because they are bad for the vocal cords. "Well, I got chucked out … twice!" she declares, sounding every bit the school-of-hardknocks pro and letting her mum, Lucy, fill in the details about how she was "what you call in the industry heavily pencilled" at the first auditions, but didn't quite make it – only to be called back months later leading to a frantic to-and-fro with Les Misérables at the other end. "Nobody but me is going to change my story," she sings in Naughty. "I think Matilda is intelligent and powerful," says Sophia. Of the four mums, Jill seems least set on a life in the theatre for her daughter. "Because she's different from all the others and she's got these powers and her parents do not even notice because they pay no attention at all. Eleanor's mum, Jill, bought her a card while they were waiting to hear whether she had got the part. When I ask if they have tried to imagine how they will one day look back on all this, Cleo says: "I've made a scrapbook and I think one day I'll look through that and think that was me, and now I'm grown up and" – she breaks into the lyrics of the show's sweetest tune – "I can eat sweets every day on the way to work and go to bed late every night. Headmistress Miss Trunchbull (played by Bertie Carvel) is a terrifying sadist, and until she meets teacher Miss Honey, Matilda is lonely and unloved. She's this incredible girl, and her parents think she's just evil. The girls each perform twice a week, attending two further performances as a stand-by, and are company friends, having sleepovers at each other's houses on nights off. "If I don't go through them before I do them, I forget them," says Kerry of the tragic tale of the acrobat and the escapologist that Matilda tells in several instalments. To my mind, Matilda is the most exciting role in the West End, in the most exciting show. She says she got emotional and cried on her first night during the curtain call. Sophia says: "Because we're the first people, when they have the 25th or 30th anniversary, they'll invite us back on stage, they'll say, 'Please welcome the original cast!'" But if child stardom doesn't convert into the adult version for these lucky girls, it is perhaps not too sentimental to imagine that the first leading role they played will stand them in good stead, whatever happens. "We go through them in the wings, do not we," says her mum, Sally. "But we will not be all the same, will we?" adds Sophia Kiely, 12, who had never acted before Matilda. . |
Sunday, 8 April 2012
Matilda the musical: Daughters on stage
