The cast of the Sound of Music in Dublin's Bord Gais Energy Theatre have hailed the 'great buzz' in the audience when everyone sings and claps along as the show runs.
The Sound of Music is currently running in the theatre, with the final shows on January 6. The production sees The Voice UK finalist Lucy O'Byrne take on the lead role of Maria, with former EastEnders star Neil McDermott as Captain Von Trapp, and Celine Byrne playing Mother Abbess.
"It was electric," Byrne told RTÉ Entertainment of their first performance in front of an audience.
O'Byrne added that she had warned McDermott that the audience were likely to get very involved in the singing side of things, with the actor surprised at how "some of them know every line and the script too."
"I was standing in the wings with Neil last night at the end of Act Two... And he was like 'Oh that entr'acte is very long isn't it' at the beginning of Act Two where they play little bits from all of the big numbers that we've sung in the first half," she recalled.
"And I said, 'You just wait, I promise you, the audience will sing along and clap along' and I was standing next to him when it happened last night and they all started to sing and I was like, 'I told you'."
Sound of Music marks O'Byrne's first time involved in "something this big in Dublin" and the "great buzz in the audience" added to the experience for her.
McDermott mused that Sound of Music's association with Christmas is "quite odd" saying, "It's weird isn’t it, Sound of Music has a reputation for being a Christmas show, which is quite odd really because there's absolutely nothing Christmassy about the show, but I guess because the film is always on every Christmas…"
Byrne put this down to how "family orientated" a story it is.
On the show itself, McDermott said they are lucky as actors that the material they have to work with is so impressive.
"We're very lucky that it's a great show, it's a case of Rogers and Hammerstein and everybody have done a lot of the work for us, so we just have to deliver as best we can," he said.
"Obviously the songs are really well known to the audience and the story is a great story, it's no coincidence that some stories stand the test of time because this is such an amazing story and our job as actors is to go out and deliver the story as best we can."
Tickets from €21.00 are on sale now from Ticketmaster and for more see www.bordgáisenergytheatre.ie
