There's something about Mary (From Watford Observer)

There's something about Mary

10:54am Monday 30th November 2009

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Nativity! is a new British comedy film about the struggles of a former actor turned teacher to stage the annual Christmas production at a Coventry Primary School. In a moment of competitive madness, Mr Madden (played by Martin Freeman) announces that a Hollywood producer will be coming to see this year’s show, which is the cue to all sorts of toe-curling embarrassment en route to a feelgood, all-singing, all-dancing spectacular finale.

Lovable Martin Freeman played the key role in what I still believe to be the ultimate heart-warming small-screen festive special. You’d have a heart the size and consistency of an uncooked Brussels sprout not to have blinked away a tear when Tim and Dawn finally got it together in the last ever episode of The Office to the plaintive sound of Yazoo’s ‘Only You', so I have to say that I’m quite looking forward to seeing him play yet another essentially decent, but thwarted character in Nativity!

Then again, I’m quite keen on the concept of Nativity plays all round. If I’m honest, I have to admit there’s still a part of me that aches to be invited to play the role of Mary - even though I’m 46!

Apparently I was quite a ‘confident’ toddler. While some of my little friends quivered in fear at the prospect of performing in front of a crowd, I couldn’t wait to be up there showing off.

Yes, indeed - at my nursery school in Watford’s Harebreaks, I was always first in the queue when it came to handing out the main parts in our Christmas productions.

At the age of just three I starred as the Robin in a singalong performance about all the flora and fauna of the forest getting ready for Christmas night, and a year later I was Cinderella in our pantomime of the same name.

So, as you can imagine, it was quite a shock to arrive at Knutsford primary school fully expecting to take up the reins of the donkey and quite possibly a big tinsel halo in my first ever Nativity play, only to find that the pivotal role of Mary had been assigned to another girl.

To make matters worse, I was given the part of ‘child adoring the infant Jesus’, a character who doesn’t make so much as a walk-on appearance in any of the Four Gospels.

Things got even worse the following year when Knutsford swapped a Nativity for a pantomime and staged a full school production of The Sleeping Beauty.

Considering that just two years previously I’d been basking in the limelight as Cinderella, it was quite a blow to be cast as a bit of foliage.

There I was, dressed in a rotten old hessian sack decorated with a lot of stick-on paper leaves, prancing about and flapping my arms in a supposedly hedge-like way in front Lorraine Barclay’s recumbent Sleeping Beauty. Lorraine, I recall, was wearing a lovely gold sparkly dress and draped over a big bed in the centre of the stage.

Something had clearly gone seriously wrong here.

Although at the age of six I had yet to see Sunset Boulevard, I knew just how Norma Desmond felt.

When we moved house the following year and I started at Cassiobury Junior School, I was pretty sure that my star would be in the ascendant once again. I was more than ready for my close-up, Mr De Mille.

Winter term arrived and the annual Christmas play was the talk of the school. This was going to be my last pop at the Nativity’s central role and I was ready to give it my all. On a fateful day in early December, the casting was announced in the main hall. With baited breath I counted off the key roles on my fingers…Inn Keeper, Inn Keeper’s Wife, Donkey, Herod, Three Kings, Angel Gabriel, Shepherd’s Watching their Flock by Night, Joseph.

This was it, this was my moment… Mrs Chatterton pushed her glasses up her nose and smiled at our expectant faces: “And this year our Mary will be…Katy Wilkins.”

This was some mistake, surely? Obviously I was destined to be the lead female?

Mrs Chatterton continued: “If I haven’t read your name out, don’t worry, we still need lots of farmyard animals.”

Brilliant! I was going to be a sheep. A star is shorn.

Looking back I don’t think I’ve ever quite recovered from not being picked to be Mary. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that the fact I looked like a Weeble and had really short hair might have contributed to my teachers’ inability to detect my absolute perfection for the role, but I still bear the mental scars - and a grudge that goes deeper than the Marianas Trench.

The thing about Mary is that it’s really a part for a meek, mild, moppet with long hair and distinct lack of attitude, and I’m afraid that’s never been me.

A word to the wise here, but if you are a mum hoping to see your adored female offspring take the central role in a Nativity play in the near future, steer clear of hairdressers. Lorraine ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Barclay and Katy ‘Virgin Mary’ Wilkins both had silver-gilt blonde hair down to their bottoms.

Mind you, despite the fact that a film of the same name is on show at a cinema near you at this very moment, it looks like the days of the traditional Nativity play are numbered anyway. If you are a mum hoping to dress a small shepherd this year don't invest in any new tea towels.

I had a phone call from a friend last week, who was incandescent that her five- year-old daughter’s South London primary school has decided to drop the traditional Nativity play in favour of something called a ‘Winter Festival‘.

Apparently, this year, there are to be no costumes, no carols and absolutely no mention of Christmas.

“We’ve been told it’s because it’s disruptive to their schedule and they can’t fit it into the National Curriculum,” she spluttered in rage, adding: “And Tara had set her heart on being an angel. She was going to wear a long white dress, gold sandals, silver wings and a tinsel halo on a wire. They are denying her an essential rite of childhood. It‘s monstrous!”

There was a significant pause, while I allowed my friend to digest what she’d just told me. I mean, Tara is a bright little girl, but I doubt that she had planned her costume with such military precision.

“Emma,” I said, as gently as possible, “don’t you actually mean that they’ve denied you an essential rite of motherhood?”