The scope and scale of roles to be performed by children in musicals has continued to develop, notably in those musicals that have been developed in the UK. A number of musicals, including Willy Russell’s Blood Brothers, have avoided the issues of employing child actors by using the convention of adults playing children, often to comic effect. The Royal Shakespeare company’s production of Matilda uses a hybrid of the two with a combination of children and adults to play the schoolchildren. For as long as there have been Broadway musicals there have been roles for children. This history goes right back to the days of vaudeville where children’s acts were a popular attraction. The same year as The Sound of Music opened, another musical, Gypsy, chronicled the decline of family-friendly vaudeville, as Mamma Rose and her children’s act is desperately re-worked until the children grow and Louise becomes the burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee.