OnTheTown Catherine FoleyDoes Cinderella fall in love? "No," said Abby Creedon (aged three) firmly. Does she meet a prince? "No," she said, more interested in admiring her pink tinkerbell shoes. Then, changing her mind, she said: "Yes!"
Abby was with her parents, Felicity and Michael Creedon, and her brother, Con (five) at the opening night of Cinderella in Liberty Hall Theatre, Dublin, this week.
Larry Bass, executive producer of the television series, You're a Star, was also in the audience with his wife, Catherine, and their four children, Carla (11), Gracie (nine), Robert (seven) and Lauren (five).
There was a harum-scarum atmosphere in the theatre on Monday night as children took their seats, then shouted, shrieked and awaited the excitement about to unfold.
"I work for the scariest woman in the world!" announced Sammy Sausages, who is played by TV3 broadcaster Alan Hughes.
"Is it Mary Harney?" asked members of the Junior Dance Corps.
"No, even scarier than that," answered Sammy, explaining that his boss was the Wicked Stepmother. On cue, Linda Martin, clearly relishing the hissing and booing, made her regal entrance to the strains of the Chicago film hit, I Had To Do It, by way of explaining that she had no choice but to kill her ex-husband, Cinderella's father.
There was more laughter in the house when the two Ugly Sisters, Barbie and Buffy, played by David Reilly and Joe Conlon, swaggered on, singing Dontcha Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me.
"Am I doing anything for you?" the drop-dead ugly Buffy asked the children in the front row.
"Yeah, you're bringing up his dinner," responded Barbie, swirling in her gigantic Day-Glo green and yellow dress and wig. The adults and children were delighted. Hilarity was the order of the night.
Cinderella, the Lyons Tea Panto runs at Liberty Hall Theatre until Sun, Jan 22
Following rare birds across the Atlantic
Two islands on opposite sides of the Atlantic will celebrate a unique link in a film to be screened on television tomorrow evening.
Sceilig and Bermuda, a documentary telling the story of seabirds who have taken refuge on these islands, is produced by New Yorker Deirdre Brennan. The film was inspired by the cahow, one of the rarest seabirds in existence, and the work to save it in Bermuda, explained Maura Kinney, Brennan's sister at a special screening in Dublin on Tuesday night.
The film also tells the story of similar birds on Sceilig Island, which have been studied by Irish ornithologist Oscar Merne for more than 35 years. The birds on Sceilig are the Manx shearwater and the storm petrel, explained Merne at a special reception in Screen Scene on Dublin's Upper Mount Street. They belong to the same nocturnal tubenose pelagic seabird family as the cahow, he said.
The reception, which was organised by Sinéad Bagnall, of Screen Scene, was held to celebrate the film's completion.
"It's a terrific achievement for anybody to have made a film about a bird that was thought for over 300 years to have been extinct," said Éamon de Buitléar, the film's director, about Brennan's first production. Bermuda's cahow bird, he said, "is a nocturnal bird that only comes into land during the night".
To make the film, de Buitléar worked with a crew which included his son, director of photography Cian de Buitléar, sound recordist Brendan Deasy, and assistant cameraman Conor Kelly.
Also present at the screening were Bernice Moran, a pilot with Ryanair, and solicitor Alec Gabbett, from Co Limerick. De Buitléar's wife, Laillí de Buitléar, and their daughters, artist Róisín de Buitléar and dietician Aoife Kirwan, were also at the reception.
Sceilig and Bermuda will be shown on RTÉ2 at 8.35pm tomorrow night
Five hundred voices raised
'In the bleak mid-winter/ Frosty wind made moan," sang the choristers at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, last Monday night. Their voices, accompanied by the organ, played by Tristan Russcher, filled the 11th-century building.
"Let us remember . . . the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed, the sick, and all who mourn, the lonely and the unloved, the aged and the little children," said Dean Des Harman at the start of the cathedral's Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Former archbishop of Dublin Dr Donald Caird and his wife, Nancy, were among the congregation of 500 who gathered at Christ Church to celebrate.
Johanna Hyland, from Terenure, Dublin, whose daughter, Méabh Hyland (16), is a chorister at the cathedral, was there with her sister, Maria Woulfe, from Dundrum, Dublin.
Máire Owens, a singer with the Goethe Choir, who often comes to evensong in the cathedral, was looking forward in particular to an Irish version of The Enniscorthy Carol, where her grandmother came from.
"Tá áthas orm go bhfuil carúl anseo as Loch Garmain nach bhfuil ar eolas agam. Tá sé aistrithe go Gaeilge. B'as Inis Corthaidh do mo shean-mháthair," she said.
Others at the event included Lucinda Shaw, from Dalkey, Co Dublin, and her boyfriend, Simon Boucher, who was just home from Florence in Italy, where he is doing a PhD in political science at the European University Institute. Also there were Gary and Claire Falkiner, from Mountmellick, Co Laois.
"I come because the standard of music is excellent here and for the spirit of Christmas," said Douglas Poynton, from Blackrock, Co Dublin, who sings with St Bartholomew's Choir.
Before the ceremony ended, the entire congregation, under the baton of musical director, Judy Martin, joined together for a rendition of Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.