Billa O'Connell is the first to admit that he was born into the Cork pantomime tradition and now after 50 Christmasses playing "the Granny", his name is the one most associated with the annual Cork Opera House show. "The pantomime in Father O'Leary's Hall on the southside of Cork city was like a nursery for all the children in the area. When I was a young lad, I went to the panto every night. In the beginning, I helped selling programmes and when I was 19, I played my first dame in Cinderella," he explains enthusiastically.
"There were seven or eight pantomimes every Christmas in Cork at that time and it was everyone's ambition to make the Opera House. When I did get there, I was rehearsing for my first break when the Opera House burned down. That was 1955 and we were rehearsing The Sleeping Beauty, which was transferred to the Ancient Order of Hibernia Hall - which went on fire as well. Needless to say, The Sleeping Beauty wasn't played in Cork city for many years after that ill-fated night," continues the self-taught panto dame.
Father to six children and grandfather to 16, Billa believes children nowadays still get the same enjoyment out of the traditional pantomime. "When they are at that lovely innocent age of standing on chairs and coming out into the aisles to help me, it's magical," he says. "I love breaking down that barrier between the audience and the stage and bringing the children along with me through the story," he continues. Billa tells a tale of how one night he was cajoling the children into saying that the nasty old woman he was playing was beautiful. "Oh, no you're not," rang out a chorus of voices, following by one little familiar voice which said, "Yes, you are beautiful, Grandda".
Speaking about the scripting of the pantomime, Billa is quick to give praise to Michael Twomey, another veteran of the genre who will also be known to older readers as one of the Cha and Miah duo from the satirical RTE programme, Hall's Pictorial Weekly. And does he suffer from stage fright? "Yes, I get very nervous every night before going on but I give a quick call to Holy God - it's the one line that's never engaged - and then off I go."
Billa O'Connell plays alongside Frank Twomey, Patrick Talbot, Noel Barrett and Pat Sullivan in Red Riding Hood at the Cork Opera House from December 19th January 23rd nightly at 8 p.m. with matinees on Saturdays (inc. St Stephen's Day), Sundays and New Years Day, at 3 p.m. Tel: 021 270022.
