David Walliams recalls happy Chichester childhood memories as city welcomes world premiere

The show, adapted by Bryony Lavery and with music and lyrics by Joe Stilgoe, runs at Chichester Festival Theatre until November 3.

And all because Chichester asked him.

“They approached me! I have got 11 novels now, and there has been a very successful touring production of Gangsta Granny. The RSC are developing The Boy in the Dress. They are doing lots of brilliant things, but for this one, Chichester just asked me.

“I used to go to the theatre in Chichester a lot as a child. We lived in Surrey, and my parents used to take me. The theatre has got a very good reputation. My parents saw Alec Guinness there. I didn’t, but I did see Frankie Howerd there in A Funny Thing Happened To Me on the Way to the Forum. It was an epiphany moment! I wanted to be Frankie Howerd!

“But I just loved the theatre in Chichester. I saw the Alan Bennett production last year because Richard Wilson is a friend of mine, and it brought back such happy memories of going there. I saw Ian McKellen at Chichester. I have seen quite a lot over the years, and it has got such an amazing reputation.

“And now I am super-excited that they are doing my book there and that they are turning it into a musical which was very new territory for me. I am not musical in any way. I can’t sing. I can’t play an instrument. I can’t dance. So the whole thing is super magical to have songs in the mouths of my characters.”

An inventive tale of fun, friendship and the importance of kindness, the show has been adapted from David’s biggest selling children’s book of 2016.

A bang on the head during a cricket match at his boarding school has landed twelve-year-old Tom in the children’s ward of the spooky Lord Funt Hospital.

Luckily, he’s not on his own with the child-hating Matron and the scary-looking Porter. George, Amber, Robin and Sally are in there too, and they’re not taking things lying down. When the lights go out and the clock strikes twelve, they’re off. But will they let new boy Tom join their forbidden midnight adventures through the hospital’s labyrinthine realm?

“I have been to rehearsals,” David says, “but I try not to be precious about it. I come from a writing for TV background and TV writing is very collaborative. I am used to compromising. If I am standing over their shoulders saying ‘I want you to do this’, it would be very inhibiting. I suppose if there were massive, massive changes, I might question it, but they have followed the book and really I just have to hand the book to them. It is for other people to mould it and shape it into the musical. It is sensible to stand back otherwise you would just be incredibly precious… and it is a super-talented team.”

The hospital setting is significant: “Because of the success of things I have done on TV, I have been invited to meet kids in hospitals quite a lot, and the reality is that as much as they are being looked after and their families are there, they can feel quite isolated. There is something they are not doing. They are missing school, and you might think ‘Oh great, missing school!’ but some of these children can be there for weeks and months, and it can get incredibly boring and frustrating.”