The sun may have been beaming down on Dublin's Parnell Square yesterday but auditions for the Christmas pantomime were under way at the Ambassador Theatre.
More than 700 young hopefuls queued to audition for Cinderella, which will open on
St Stephen's Day. The queuing started at 7am even though the auditions did not open until 10am. By lunchtime, the queue had snaked past the Garden of Remembrance.
Young girls cartwheeled along the street while a 60-strong group from the Hollywood Academy competed to out-sing each other as they waited to be seen by the five judges.
All that was missing was Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne as the children took to the stage to sing a snatch of a song and perform a short dance routine.
"We'll keep going until we see them all," said Stuart O'Connor, one of the show's producers.
Between 80 and 100 children will finally be selected for the all-children show. If someone catches the eye of the production team, the scriptwriters will write a part for them, he said.
"The kids are so confident now. The difference is that the kids nowadays are used to seeing X Factor and Pop Idol so they know what to expect when they come in. It's not like a few years ago when you were trying to coax the kids along."
Leanne Roche (14) and her friends didn't need any coaxing to talk as they waited in the queue. "I'm nervous and I'm overtired. That's why I'm so giddy. But I couldn't even sing for my dinner," Leanne cheerfully admitted. Nevertheless, she was planning to sing Everybody Hurts "the one on the Trócaire ad".
Further back in the queue, Sonia O'Connor from Inchicore was standing patiently with her three children aged from one to seven. They had been queuing for nearly four hours.
"She's not in a stage school. She's just a drama queen," she said as her daughter Aoife (7) swung from the railings of the theatre.
Inside the theatre, Nathalie Van Geerke sat cuddling her two-week old baby boy as they waited for his big sister Zoe (12) to take to the stage. "He's grand, sleeping and eating all day," she said. They had arrived four hours earlier, at 9.30am. "She really, really wants this. She loves singing, dancing and acting," Ms Van Geerke said.
Meanwhile, Dubliner Ailbhe Goulding (11) was reflecting on her lack of dancing skills. "I can't dance at all," she confessed. "I do ballet but that's different. I don't know I will get on."
