ARTISTIC licence is a wonderful thing, most of all in the energy field created by Robert C Kelly with University Concert Hall in pantomime production. These annual performances are as explosive and funny as they are popular. Their ‘Sleeping Beauty’ with an all-star line up for principal roles will open on December 16, offering two shows on most days in response to demand.
Enter Magneficent (Hilda Fay), “the King’s (Keith Duffy) auntie in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ who was banished 21 years ago because of evil. Now she is back to cause havoc. Yes, she is born to be bad, it’s in the blood”.
Hilda Fay has fangs and ferocity for this lusciously bold part in which Magneficent and her son Rupert (Richard Lynch) “just go for Aurora (Leanne Moore as Beauty).
“We’ve come back after all those years and that’s when the fun starts. Although it is really Rupert to whom I give a hard time”.
Photography: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
Hilda has a couple of song and dance numbers, notably ‘Bad to the Bone’ from Decadent. This serious theatre actress, fresh from ‘Oedipus’ in The Abbey Theatre, sounds thrilled to be hoofing it again.
She ‘fesses up to being “one of those Billy Barry kids” and looks back with affection as a little girl training with Maureen Potter, “no better woman with whom to be introduced to pantomime”. Always in training, Hilda then took out an acting studies degree from Trinity but the work available subsequently dancing in The Gaiety, graduating over years to Ugly Sister status in panto.
Theatre work proper came eventually.
We know her from ‘Fair City’ and she took Breda Cashe’s eternally resonant ‘Little Gem’ to Limerick in March this year with Anita Reeves. Next year, she returns to lead The Abbey’s summer programme choice, ‘Tina’s Idea of Fun’ by Sean P Summers.
Photography: Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
Whatever the script and show-stopping numbers in ‘Sleeping Beauty’ at UCH, December 16 to January 3, she is especially chuffed that her children Nancy (4) and Pearl (5) will see her on stage for the first time. Happiness.
Oh yes, it is, with tickets for matinées or evening laughter on www.uch.ie and at box office.
