COME FLY WITH US!
A David Walliams story, a giant Spitfire and Nigel Planer in the lead role. What more could you want? Grandpa’s Great Escape is coming to town so JAMES RAMPTON tracked down the author to find out more
GRANDPA’S Great Escape, by David Walliams, has already had an astonishing life. It has been both a number one bestselling book and a hugely popular TV film.
Chatting with me in the run-up to the tour, Walliams cannot contain his excitement about the show being transferred to the live arena.
“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,” Walliams said.
“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 that, “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!”
Walliams has sold more than 25 million copies of his children’s books worldwide, and many have already been made into films and plays.
Grandpa’s Great Escape is his eighth book and, translated into 39 languages, has sold more than two million copies worldwide. The story centres on Grandpa, played in the show by Nigel Planer from The Young Ones. Many years ago Grandpa 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. But unbeknownst to them, the evil Matron is on their tail.
Grandpa’s Great Escape Live follows the acclaimed television film, which aired on BBC One in December 2018. The live show will be directed by Tony Award nominee Foley (The Catherine Tate Show Live & The Painkiller).
So, as arenas around the UK are transformed into London and its landmarks - seen from thousands of feet in the sky - Grandpa’s lifesize Spitfire soars through the air.
David, says he 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 and this story demands that scale. If people have already read the book, you have to give them something that is different and bigger and better.”
Walliams, 48, continues that the bewitching nature of theatre helps the production to conjure up the sheer scope of the story.
“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.”
Hitting his rhetorical strike, Walliams says that, “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.”
Walliams, star of hit TV shows Little Britain, Come Fly with Me, Big School and Walliams & Friend, carries on that, “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 more moving than the film, even though the film uses a real horse. It is hard to explain, but the magic of theatre suspends us all in the moment.”
Grandpa’s Great Escape Live is the perfect show for all the family. Walliams reflects that, “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.”
The show is also ideal Yuletide fare. According to Walliams: “It’s great that we are on at Christmas. It’s a real crossgenerational 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. Walliams, whose grandfathers were both in the War, muses that “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.
Walliams 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.”
But, he continues: “I also had the idea of old people escaping from a home and making it like The Great Escape, which is comic. I was trying to balance out those elements.
“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.”
It is absolutely the case that comedy and tragedy live side by side in real life. “People laugh in the most extraordinary circumstances,” Walliams 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.
“There’s an emotional part of Grandpa’s Great Escape that I’m very proud of. I wasn’t known for that. My career was launched with a comedy show, Little Britain. So when you think you’ve pulled off something heartfelt and emotional, it’s an amazing feeling because it’s come purely out of your imagination.
“Human beings love stories and can buy into any story. I always cry at the relationship between the mother and the baby elephant in the cartoon of Dumbo. I can see the characters aren’t real because they’re drawn, but it’s still so affecting.”
He concludes: “I want audiences at Grandpa’s Great Escape Live to forget about their everyday lives and enter this fantasy world where a group of OAPs are escaping from an old people’s home.
“Above all, I want audiences to have fun.”
■ Showing at Birmingham Arena, Monday, December 23, until Thursday, December 26 (www.arenabham.co.uk/). And at Nottingham Motorpoint Arena on Monday, December 30, 2019. (www. motorpointarenanottingham.com). Price: From £40.40 (groups of 4+ £29.20)