Singing, acting, creative costuming — if these are a few of your Favorite Things, then come on out to the Sing-A-Long Sound of Music at the Hawaii Theatre this weekend.

Just don’t expect viewers to listen if you tell them to hush up.

Audience participation, in the form of boos for Nazis, "awws" for little Gretl, cheers for fraulein Maria, and, of course, yodeling along with every tune, is seen as Something Good at this show.

"There really are no rules," said Burton White, manager and artistic director of Hawaii Theatre. "Everyone should feel free to sing out."

Hawaii Theatre house organist John McCreary will set the mood as guests enter, and the show begins with a vocal warm-up by the evening’s hosts, Eden-Lee Murray and Matt James.

Singing along with the 1965 Oscar-winning film "The Sound of Music" as it plays on screen has become a worldwide phenomenon since a London theater debuted it in 1999. The production is still playing in London, appears annually during the holidays in San Francisco, and recently attracted a crowd of 18,000 at the Hollywood Bowl .

Subtitles help the audience follow the lyrics to the songs of the film, which tells the heartwarming, broadly historical story of a young Austrian nun sent to work as a nanny for the seven children of a widowed naval captain as Nazi Germany prepares to annex their country. "Sound of Music" won five Academy Awards, including best film and best score, with Julie Andrews being denied the best actress award likely because she had won the previous year for "Mary Poppins."

ASIDE from the singing, the evening features a costume contest, but dirndls and jackbooted military uniforms are rarely the main feature at a Sing-A-Long Sound of Music. Instead, many entrants create costumes that refer to lines of a song. Everyone in costume will be invited onto the Hawaii Theatre stage.

"Some people get really, really ingenious and inventive in picking out the most obscure things," White said, adding that part of the fun is figuring out to what in the musical the costumes refer.

Often the answer is found in song lyrics. White said he has seen people dressed as "brown paper packages tied up with strings" and "girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes."

Meanwhile, he’s looking for people to join him as snowflakes ("that stay on my nose and eyelashes").

Costume contest entrants have become so competitive that they stirred up a bit of controversy in London, where on two occasions real nuns won the contest.

"It didn’t seem right that they wore their ‘work’ clothes," White said, allowing that these incidents may be part of the marketing hype surrounding the show.

Organizers, meanwhile, have issued tongue-in-cheek directives to theaters to give preference to beards and/or lipstick, to keep nuns from making participation a habit.

AUDIENCE members are free to bring props to complement their costumes, but just in case, admission includes a goody bag of props and coaching on how to use them.

"There’s a piece of edelweiss that people wave in the air, kind of like a lighter at a concert, during the two times that the captain sings ‘Edelweiss,’" White said. "There’s a little piece of cloth to wave in the air and yell at (Maria) that she should use the curtains to make play clothes for the kids."

The film’s archetypal roles of sunny and sincere nun, the initially cold but ultimately heroic captain, and evil conniving Nazis usually generate some choice observations from the crowd, and White said that’s encouraged.

"There’s a lot of interaction as far as commentary, kind of like ‘Rocky Horror,’" said White, who plans to make the sing-a-long an annual summertime event.

While it is certain that someone will yell "Shut your von Trapp!" at Max or a Nazi at some point, some remarks at other venues have not been suitable for children — despite the G rating of the film — so White hopes that the Sunday matinee will attract a family-friendly crowd.

"The evenings can get raucous," said White.