Karen:
I suspect it's not an accompanist issue, but rather one of time,
logistics and setting certain policies from the start.
It sounds like they expect hordes of folks (not to mention children) at
the audition, and want to keep things neat, clean, tidy and quick, and,
most importantly, treat everyone as equally as possible so that
complaints from the auditioners (especially the stage mothers!) will be
kept to a minimum. While I haven't ever encountered this at a community
theater or professional level, it is the norm at one of our local high
schools, where all are asked to sing Happy Birthday at the initial
auditions (as well as a monologue), which they evidently feel is
adequate to decide whether to advance someone to callbacks or not.
If I were really interested in the show, I would probably suck it up
and do it their way, being prepared to knock their socks off at
callbacks. I can't speak to the caliber of the group, but I can say
that their response did seem unnecessarily "snippy" to me!
Best of luck,
Sharon Szymanski (I played the hoity-toity woman the Captain almost
marries (the Countess?) in a production of the same some years ago - a
much more interesting part in the musical than in the movie!)
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