David reaches for the sky with Yuletide spectacular
AUTHOR AND COMEDIAN DAVID WALLIAMS TALKS TO ABOUT THE FAMILY ARENA SHOW BASED ON HIS BEST-SELLING BOOK GRANDPA’S GREAT ESCAPE, WHICH FEATURES A LIFE-SIZE SPITFIRE
GRANDPA’S Great Escape, by David Walliams, has already had an astonishing life. It has been both a number one best-selling book and a hugely popular TV film. Now, it is being transferred to the live arena in a spectacular new show that is coming to Birmingham this Christmas.
David cannot contain his excitement: “Grandpa’s Great Escape Live is an incredible new development for the book. We’re not just turning it into a live show, but into a spectacular live arena show for all the family this Christmas.
“Being in arenas means we can have a life-size Spitfire, a tank, the London landscape and a dramatic escape from the Imperial War Museum.”
He adds: “I’m delighted to be working with fantastic people like the director Sean Foley and Kevin Cecil, who’s written the script. I couldn’t be more excited about it!”
David is one of the most successful children’s authors of all time. His books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, and many have already been made into films and plays.
Grandpa’s Great Escape was his eighth book and published in September 2015 by HarperCollins Children’s Books. It has sold more than two million copies worldwide.
The book, which has been translated into 39 languages, was garlanded with praise on its publication. The Evening Standard described David as, “The new Roald Dahl”, while The Times called the story, “A beguilingly funny, original and thought-provoking tale… hilarious”.
This widely-loved story centres on Grandpa, played in the show by Nigel Planer, of The Young Ones fame.
Many years ago, he was a Second World War flying ace. But when he is dispatched to the grim old folk’s home Twilight Towers – run by the villainous Matron Swine – Grandpa and his grandson Jack have to plan an audacious escape.
Arenas will be transformed into London and its landmarks. These include Buckingham Palace and the River Thames, seen from thousands of feet in the sky, as Grandpa’s life-size Spitfire soars through the air. The set for this multi-million pound production has been created by Stufish Entertainment Architects (Cirque du Soleil, Beyonce & Jay Z, Madonna, The Rolling Stones).
David is very pleased this production can give the story the scale it deserves.
“I wanted this to be really spectacular. Some of my stories are more intimate than others, but this felt like a big spectacular. It’s great because we can really go to town with all of those elements. If people have already read the book, you have to give them something that is different and bigger and better.”
David, 48, continues: “In the book, the plane drives through London before taking off.
“For budgetary reasons, we couldn’t do that in the TV version. But on stage, where you can suspend disbelief, you can bring to life all those dramatic parts of the book. It’s all thanks to the magic of theatre.
“There’s a real sense of magic in the theatre, and I love that. I really like the creative ways theatre people solve problems. Look at the way they bring the animals to life on stage in The Lion King. You know they’re not real because you can see people operating the puppets, but it doesn’t take away any of the magic.
‘‘It’s the same with the puppets in the play of War Horse. Audiences buy into that, even though they know they’re not real. Funnily enough, a lot of people find the play of War Horse more moving than the film, even though the film uses a real horse.”
David, who has starred in such hit TV shows as Little Britain, Big School and Britain’s Got Talent, adds: “My son is six. At the shows I take him to, the spectacle is often more important than the story. Because younger children are sometimes not following the intricacies of the plot, they are sitting there in wonder at those elements. I really want to foreground that in Grandpa’s Great Escape Live and make sure it’s super spectacular.”
The show is also ideal Yuletide fare, according to David.
“It’s great that we are on at Christmas. It’s a real cross-generational story. It is about the special relationship between a grandson and a grandfather. It’s a story that can be shared across the generations.”
Like The Simpsons or Toy Story, Grandpa’s Great Escape Live is certainly a tale that will resonate with different age groups. David, whose grandfathers were both in the Second World War, muses: “Things aimed at children usually work just as well for adults. As a parent, you often choose to take your children to things that you want to see, too.
“If it’s something super smart like a Pixar movie, you want to see it even more than your child. But if it is something very childish, you think, ‘God, this is going to be so tedious!’
“I am trying to write in a very aspirational way. When I was a kid, the comedy shows I wanted to see were the ones I wasn’t allowed to watch which were on later at night. I really want this to work for grown-ups as well as kids.”
Grandpa’s Great Escape Live is undoubtedly a very rich story, cleverly mixing comedy with tragedy.
David explains: ”The book is a good balance between adventure, humour and emotion. There is a very serious part of it in that Grandpa is losing his memory and thinks he’s back in the Second World War. A lot of people are affected by that issue of dementia.
“At first, I was worried that they couldn’t coexist, but actually the comedy informs the tragedy. The fact that Grandpa thinks he’s trying to escape from a POW camp rather than an old people’s home makes it natural that it would be a Second World War-style escape.
“People laugh in the most extraordinary circumstances, “David observes. “When you visit people in hospital, you often laugh when something funny happens. It alleviates the tension. People want to divide comedy and tragedy, but life isn’t like that. I felt those things could go together in Grandpa’s Great Escape.”
David, who has been inspired by the war films he loved as a boy, such as The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare and A Bridge Too Far, wraps up by underscoring what he hopes audiences will take away from Grandpa’s Great Escape Live.
“I hope it will reinvigorate people’s interest in the Second World War and remind them of the special connection between grandparents and grandchildren.
“So many of my childhood memories are of being with my grandparents because they were so out of the ordinary. I did things with them that I never did with my parents, like going to the panto.”
●●Grandpa’s Great Escape Live is at Arena Birmingham on December 23, 24 and 26. Tickets from grandpasgreatescapelive.co.uk