Billie Barry grows up

As a family of show-offs from north Dublin, it was probably inevitable that my sisters and I would end up becoming Billie Barry kids. When I was six years old I began a weekly tap class taught by the legendary Billie herself in the Carleton Hall in Marino. A couple of years later I was doing a knee-slapping dance on the stage of the Gaiety, wearing a green Tyrolean hat, a puffy white blouse, and an unspeakable pair of red polyester lederhosen-style shorts. In the same show, my elder sister performed How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree) clad in a straw hat and luminous green dungarees.

When you tell people you went to Billie Barry for four years, they always ask the same questions. One is: "Were you on the Late Late Toy Show?" and the other is: "Were you in a pantomime?"

The answer to both, sadly, is no, because, I was never in the Theatre Group, who were the only students who did television and professional theatre work, in the early 1980s.

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Billie Barry student Jacinta Whyte, who was the first Irish girl to play the lead role in Annie in the West End

My elder sister was in the pre-theatre group, but never made it to the hallowed circle. She claims this was just because she "didn't have a terrifying grin like a shark" but I think she's just bitter. We all, however, took part in two of the school's regular spectacular stage shows. A year or two before the Tyrolean spectacular, my class danced around the Olympia stage to Sleigh Ride, more boringly attired in floaty frocks.

My sisters and I were just four of the 20,000 students who have passed through the Billie Barry Stage School since it was founded 50 years ago by Billie Barry, a former child star from a family of professional musicians.

Next month, the current crop of young performers will appear at the Gaiety in Gold, an anniversary variety show with a guest appearance by June Rogers.

There will also be a Golden Jubilee Ball for Billie Barry alumni and parents at the Mansion House, where one of the performers will be singer and actor Jacinta Whyte. Whyte, who continues to sing and perform all over the world, was legendary at the stage school when I started classes there in the early 1980s. A few years earlier she had played the eponymous heroine of the hit musical Annie in the West End, which meant that I was more jealous of her than anyone else on earth.

Today, Whyte has nothing but fond memories of her Billie Barry days. She started at the school when she was about 10, after the tap classes near her home in Artane were cancelled. She felt at home with Billie Barry straight away. “I loved singing, I loved dancing and I loved being part of a group.”

When her Saturday class was finished, she’d stay behind to watch the older students. “I used dance up the back of the hall and think [Billie Barry] wouldn’t see me. Of course she saw me. So I’d learn all the other routines as well.”

She'd already appeared with her fellow Billie Barry kids in the panto Babes in the Wood when Barry put her forward for an audition for that West End production of Annie.

Labour laws meant that no child could work on stage for more than three months in a row, so five girls, including Jacinta, were cast to play the part over the run. The experience, she says, changed her life.

"After Annie I never really had to audition again as a child in Ireland," she says. "Every year I was in the panto with Maureen Potter. They always made up a part for me because I was too young to play Cinderella or the princess."

In fact, Whyte performed all year round - in the summer, she'd appear in Potter's annual variety show Gaels of Laughter from June until September. She was always proud to be associated with Billie Barry. "There was instant [name] recognition," she says. "It was almost like having a badge. I've met people since in the business who say 'I was desperate to be a Billie Barry kid but my mother wouldn't let me.' You feel part of a very special club when you've been a Billie Barry kid."

Whyte remained close to Billie Barry herself. “Someone used to say she’s like your second mam, but I’d say she’s not, she’s my friend and my mentor,” she says. “We were always very close. She’d tell me stories of when she was younger and she’d give me advice.”

Both Barry and Potter encouraged Whyte to learn from other performers. Most child performers would go home at the interval of big stage shows, but Barry and Maureen Potter encouraged Whyte to stay on and watch the stage from the wings. “Miss Barry would say ‘watch and learn’. You can be taught but the best way to do anything is to get out there and watch people.”

Whyte’s looking forward to honouring her mentor at the Jubilee Ball. “I still think of her as Miss Barry,” she says. “I remember when I hit my 20s and still said Miss Barry, she’d say, ‘Billie, my name is Billie’. But I just couldn’t say it. It was a respect thing. We all had such respect for her – she was like god there.”

Today, Billie’s daughter Lorraine presides over the school, but if 14-year-old Babette “Babs” Ryan is anything to go by, today’s students are equally hard working. Daughter of the late RTÉ presenter Gerry Ryan, she started classes at the stage school at the age of four.

“My mum always told me that, from a young age, I did her head in dancing around the house,” she says when we meet in the Food Room café in Clontarf. “She thought they should do something about it so they brought me down to Lorraine and that was it.” She loved it straight away.

“I was definitely dragged to school kicking and screaming, but never to Billie Barry,” she laughs. “I never asked my mum if I could stay at home. I was always just ‘Billie Barry’s today, let’s do the routine really quickly!’”

Now she attends classes twice a week, and has performed in several Billie Barry musical shows in the Gaiety as well as doing voice-over work for the play The Park in the Smock Alley theatre.

She loves the classes and her friends take her devotion to Billie Barry for granted – some of them have come to see her in the shows. “But there are definitely a few kids [at school] who are like, ‘So you dedicate your days to dancing and singing?’ And I’m like, ‘What would you do with the rest of your time?’”

She knows that people have preconceived ideas of Billie Barry kids and what they do. “Sometimes I tell my friends, ‘I can’t do that, I’m going to Billie Barry that day’ and they’re like, ‘What? You’re 14, Babs. I thought Billie Barry kids just do pantos’.” She sighs: “No. No, we don’t just do pantos.

“Or people are like, ‘What, you’re a Billie Barry kid?’ [she fixes her face in a grimacing grin and does jazz hands].”

The very funny and self-aware Babs clearly takes this in her stride. At one stage she freezes and whispers:“Look behind you!” I turn to see a small girl in a Billie Barry uniform entering the café with her mum. “Oh my God, they’re everywhere,” says Babs.

She can't wait to perform in Gold, though she won't give away any details of the show.

“All I can say is that coming up to each show, I’ve never been this hyped up before. The costumes are spectacular.”

She’s going to turn 15 during the show’s week-long run. “All the girls in my class are going to get me a cake and sing happy birthday back stage. I couldn’t imagine spending my birthday any other way.”

For many Billie Barry students, the classes are just a fun hobby, and no one is forced into professional work. But those who want to take their performing further are supported.

“There’s always this open door,” says Babs. “You could pursue this if you wanted to, you have the tools to make this happen yourself. Or you can go ‘eh, I’m not into that’. But if you want to, you need the kick up the bum to make it happen.

“Lorraine wouldn’t push anybody but she lets you know you can do it if you want to. She encourages everyone to pursue their dream.”

Babs definitely wants to work on the stage. When she was younger, her sisters took her to see Wicked on Broadway during a family holiday in New York.

"I wouldn't stop singing Defying Gravity for about three years straight. They'd be like, 'Babs, please, it was three years ago.' It made a big impression on me and I could imagine how fun [the actors] life must be, doing this every night."

I know how she felt. Several decades after I left Billie Barry for the Harcourt Street drama classes of Betty Ann Norton (“Traitor,” says Babs in mock-rage, when I tell her about this), I still sometimes wonder if it’s definitely too late to be a musical theatre star if you’re 39 and have no real stage experience. I’ve done a few adult tap classes, just for fun (at least, that’s what I tell people. Really, I’m hoping I’ll finally get that West End role).

In fact, I never turn down an opportunity to do a bit of tap dancing. My nephew Eli, who is almost two, is particularly good at enabling this.

“More stomping, Anna!” he commands, and that’s all the encouragement I need to start tapping around the kitchen while he gleefully stamps his feet. You can take the girl out of Billie Barry but you can never, ever take the Billie Barry out of the girl.

Gold runs at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, from October 28th to November 1st. Booking opens at the Gaiety Box office and Ticketmaster on September 23rd.