Stage Mum, by Lisa Gee

Some people sit on their butts/ Got the dreams, yeah, but not the guts," sang Ethel Merman, playing the mother of all stage mothers, in the original Broadway production of Gypsy. Although this motto is strangely exhilarating and can provide good early-morning motivational ballast, everyone knows stage mothers of this sort are - well - bad. They distort personalities and ride roughshod over childhoods, leaving unhappy adults to pick up the pieces. Each frenzied Mrs Worthington, stage-lore has it, equals at least one brattish, traumatised tot. Drugs and alcohol, we're so often shown, soon replace the lustre of applause once the awkward age looms. Is that the sort of future you want for your child?

Is it humanly possible to involve your child in show business without disaster? Stage Mum by Lisa Gee, a thorough and engaging account of what it is like to have your six-year-old daughter play Gretl in the West End production of The Sound of Music (complete with Connie Fisher), sets out to investigate.

Gee's balanced and amiable traveller's guide to theatreland takes us from the lengthy auditions right through to the "This is my cousin, she used to be famous" aftermath. We witness endless waiting, joyous recalls, the soaring hope and artificial caution that theatrical environments promote. We're introduced to gruelling rehearsal schedules, ex-child stars, chaperones with hearts of gold, the exhaustion and subsequent grumpiness of mother and daughter, the endless snacks, the joys of parental and childish camaraderie, and delicious horror stories of old-school stage mothers who hover out of sight, screaming at their children for forgetting lines or fluffing steps.

It's an important aspect of Stage Mum that both mother and daughter enter into this mad world lightly, attending an audition one day because there's "nothing in the diary". Neither is seeking any sort of validation from the process, not glory nor glue for a fractured state. Gee is not a "stagemother" (alarming, pushy, ambitious), she lets us know; she is a "stagemum" (scatty, easygoing, fun). It is a point of pride that she doesn't know what her daughter weighs.

Dora's theatrical prowess strikes her mother as a complete surprise. In fact, she is so braced for consoling her daughter in the face of rejection that, when success comes, it regularly provokes panic.

Although the level of detail in Stage Mum is quite astonishing - there are, possibly, 33 children's trips to the loo in its 240 pages – the chief strength of this book is that it contains a good deal of information you could not possibly know unless you had lived this existence yourself. The shabby treatment meted out to the parents of the young stars, who are permanently held at arm's length, seems unjust; they are never allowed backstage or into rehearsals and must wait for their offspring by the wheelie bins outside the stage door, even in the driving rain.

Often it felt that these model modern stagemums were being punished for the heinous crimes of grim stagemothers of old. I was also shocked to learn that the fee paid to little Dora for putting her all into The Sound of Music twice a week was only £35 per show, considerably less than a top price ticket and scarcely enough for a bunch of eidelweiss and a plate of schnitzel with noodles.

The good news is that Stage Mum proves that having a child in a show may be possible in a way that is not ruinous, but there will always be a price to pay. However madcap and carefree the initial involvement, it is a highly serious business that comes with no holidays, no room for nerves, lateness, doubts, complaints, differences of opinion or excuses. It cannot be less for a parent, for a child, than a huge labour of love.

Susie Boyt's 'My Judy Garland Life' will be published by Virago in October

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