The Rehearsal Club – Kate Fodor and Laurie Petrou
Groundwood Books, 2025
Kate Fodor and Laurie Petrou’s new middle-grade novel, about aspiring actresses and quirky kids, is quite a production. Alternating between two eras, it does not involve time travel, but rather involves a mystery in the past which contemporary characters have committed to solve. If this description sounds somewhat formulaic, the novel transcends the very formula that frames its story. While several familiar elements are there; the magic of theater, coming of age narratives, sibling and friendship rivalries, and intergenerational tensions, they avoid all the clichés associated with this popular literary and cinematic tradition.
The Rehearsal Club is a wonderful book.
Paloma “Pal” Gallagher is a twelve-year old girl who has just moved from Arizona to New York City, where her older sister, Naomi, is pursuing a career in theatre. Pal’s parents are both librarians, and her mother has a new job in the New York Public Library system. Pal is outgoing and socially awkward at the same time, but she finds a crew of similarly category-resisting friends who provide one another with mutual support. The women’s residence where Naomi lives has a long history, but is now facing financial extinctions. Chapters set in 1954 follow two young mid-century characters, Olive and Posy, with contrasting personalities and different approaches to finding success on Broadway. Meanwhile, in the present, Pal’s parents take off for a librarians’ conference and Pal, temporarily and surreptitiously, moves in with Naomi, and becomes part of her distinctive milieu.
The authors capture perfectly the competitiveness and camaraderie of theater life, in both the past and present. If it seems idealized to have such striking differences between Olive and Posy, the resolution of their dreams as parallel, more than intersecting, actually works. At every point when the reader is asked to suspend disbelief just a bit, a surprise intervenes. There are so many antecedents for the idea of conflict mixed with solidarity in this setting, that adding a new element seems improbable. Melanie Crowder’s Mazie, for a young adult audience, is also inventive in simultaneously paying homage to clichés while dismantling them, and Shira and Esther’s Double Dream Debut by Anna E. Jordan plays with mistaken identity and explores Yiddish theater.
Characters age in The Rehearsal Club. The young and insecure Olive becomes an ageing grande dame with some decidedly unattractive qualities, but also a core of honesty and toughness. In fact, she reminded me a little of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, for those qualities as well as for her impatience with the idea of patronizing children. Young people need to learn from older ones, and, fortunately, the advice offered by people with more experience actually has value.
As the authors explain in their afterword, there was a rehearsal club in New York. That reality was an inspiration for the story of Pal, Olive, Posy, and all the others determined to break a leg and perform to great acclaim. But only the imaginative and skilled approach of Fodor and Petrou allowed brought the script to life.
Imaginary Elevators 