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We’ve teamed up to offer tickets & prizes to celebrate The Tiger Who Came To Tea returning to Theatre Royal Haymarket and here’s a Q&A with the book’s author Judith Kerr OBE
Back by popular demand, the Olivier Award nominated stage production of The Tiger Who Came to Tea returns to Theatre Royal Haymarket this summer, celebrating its 10th West End season.
And we’ve teamed up with our friends at the theatre to offer one lucky winner a family theatre ticket (for four people) and a goodie bag.
A musical play adapted and directed by David Wood OBE, based on the classic tale by Judith Kerr OBE, The Tiger Who Came to Tea opens at Theatre Royal Haymarket on Monday, 8th July, until Sunday 1st September, playing for a strictly limited eight-week season.
The 2024 West End cast includes: Abbey Norman (Sophie), Jenanne Redman (Mummy), Benjamin Stone (Daddy, Milkman, Postman, Tiger), Myles Waby (Understudy) and Sarah Horton (Alternative Sophie/Mummy).
Here’s a Q&A with the iconic book’s author, Judith Kerr, just before she died in 2019.
Q. The Tiger Who Came to Tea celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. What do you think makes the story so timelessly popular?
“I think because it was a bedtime story for my three-year-old daughter and I put in all the things that she liked and she seems to have had normal tastes. I’d made up the other stories for her but this was the one my daughter she liked best, about a tiger who came to tea. She used to say ‘Talk the tiger!’ and so I told it so many times. I was very pleasantly surprised when they said they’d publish it. I certainly had no idea that it would be success it has become.”
Q. What was your inspiration for The Tiger Who Came to Tea?
“Quite often we went to the zoo. In those days, before David Attenborough, it was the only way you could see animals. We found the tigers just so incredibly beautiful.”
Q. Which do you enjoy most? Writing or illustrating? And why?
“Illustrating, because I always wanted to draw from a young age and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to. Even now, I try to draw every day if I can. My visual memory holds on to things – how people move and walk on the street, how their trousers hang. Those things stay with you.”
Q. What do you like to see most in children’s literature today?
“I love illustrators and it’s a wonderful time for children’s illustration and illustrated books and not just picture books. I have done an illustrated chapter book myself called Mister Cleghorn’s Seal, that was published a few years ago.”
Q. Who was your favourite author as a child when you were growing up?
“I loved to read fairy tales, particularly when they were illustrated.”
Q. You seem to know instinctively what sparks a child’s imagination, is there anything in your own life that has enabled you to write in that way?
“I suppose it was from watching my own children when they were small and working out what they liked. I wasn’t able to work before my children stayed for lunch at school. I think I must have a good memory as I remember such a lot of my own childhood and especially the time leaving Germany and coming to Paris and London.”
Q. What do you consider to be your greatest achievement?
“I suppose it has to be surviving until 95!”
Q. The Tiger Who Came to Tea also celebrates over 10 years on stage. What do you think David Wood has brought to the stage adaptation of Tiger?
“A brilliant imagination and years of remarkable expertise.”
Q. Do you have a favourite song from the stage show?
“My favourite is the song Different In The Dark.”
Q. Do you have a motto for life?
“No so much a motto, but I would say work is a great help.”
To enter our prize draw, fill in the form below before 12pm on Friday 26th July.
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SERIOUSKL IT’S FOR ME,ME,ME…
Hoping it would inspire the kids in a special way..
it’s for me to take my grandchildren!