Rebecca, Eh, Storms The Whale

Ms Storm

iven the fact that she’s been a queen of musical theatre for the last 30 years, everyone at The Whale tonight knew already that Rebecca Storm has one hell of a voice on her.

What they probably didn’t know until tonight though was that she has one hell of a mouth on her too.

Hey, you can take the girl out of West Yorkshire, but…

Take her introduction to I Dreamed A Dream, the song that Storm had the honour of bringing to the world as part of the very first West End production of Les Miserables. This is the song that later made Susan Boyle a millionaire. And won Anne Hathaway an Oscar.

She may be the original of the species when it comes to I Dreamed A Dream, but Storm somehow ended up with the short straw, and she was more than happy to tell The Whale audience tonight just how that made her feel.

It was enough to make even emcee Maclean Burke blush.

The star-spangled night was all in aid of Greystones Cancer Support, and it says something about the pulling power of The Whale that such a big star would come and perform in such a small town. Over the last three decades, Rebecca has performed in just about every country, and on just about every major stage.

And tonight, this international star’s stage was in Greystones. Sweet!

The Super Draw prize winners on the night were Kieran Gaskin (who won a case of Grand Cru de Saint-Emilion Chateau Frombrauge, donated by Paul Hayden), Viv Davis (Celtic Mosaic Wooden Display Platter, donated by Paul Keogh at Enniscorthy’s Artisan’s Studio), Rob Fortune (Season Park Farm Allotment voucher from Paul Kavanagh), Evelyn Redmond (dinner, bed & breakfast for two at the Glendalough Hotel, donated by Pat Casey TD), Cathy Gascoine (Fourball from Delgany Golf Club, courtesy of Mark Molloy at the Horse & Hound) and Geraldine Keville (set of Chestnutt Photography’s framed triptych The Grey Stones Photos).

As to the €1,000 SuperValu shopping voucher very kindly donated by Anne Daly, store manager Paddy Houlihan drew the golden ticket for Robyn Conway from Newcastle. So, we’re all heading to Robyn’s place this year for Christmas dinner!

We were going to take a bunch of shots on the red carpet tonight, but then we realised, given the biting cold out there, and the fact that the average age in the audience was 103, it would be verging on sadistic to ask them to stay even a second longer outdoors than they really needed to.

So, instead, here’s a video of Rebecca’s rendition of I Dreamed A Dream – complete with that refreshingly frank West Yorkshire wit in the introduction…