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Tag Archives: Abbey Theatre


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Birth of Playwright & Poet Lennox Robinson

lennox-robinson

Esmé Stuart Lennox Robinson, playwright, poet, theatre producer, and director who is involved with the Abbey Theatre, is born in Westgrove, Douglas, County Cork, on October 4, 1886.

Robinson is raised in a Protestant and Unionist family in which he is the youngest of seven children. His father, Andrew Robinson, is a middle-class stockbroker who in 1892 decides to become a clergyman in the Church of Ireland in the small Ballymoney parish, near Ballineen in West Cork. A sickly child, Robinson is educated by private tutor and at Bandon Grammar School. In August 1907, his interest in the theatre begins after he goes to see an Abbey production of plays by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory at the Cork Opera House. He publishes his first poem that same year. His first play, The Cross Roads, is performed in the Abbey in 1909 and he becomes manager of the theatre towards the end of that year. He resigns in 1914 as a result of a disastrous tour of the United States but returns in 1919. He is appointed to the board of the theatre in 1923 and continues to serve in that capacity until his death. His Abbey career and production involvement can be found in the Abbey archives.

As a playwright, Robinson shows himself as a nationalist with plays like Patriots (1912) and Dreamers (1915). On the other hand, he belongs to a part of Irish society which is not seen as fully Irish. This division between the majority native Irish (Roman Catholics) on one side and the Anglo-Irish (Protestants) on the other can be seen in a play such as The Big House (1926), which depicts the burning of a Protestant manor home by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Robinson’s most popular play is The Whiteheaded Boy (1916).

Other plays include Crabbed Youth and Age (1924), The Far Off Hills (1928), Drama at Inish (1933), and Church Street (1935). Drama at Inish, which is presented in London and on Broadway as Is Life Worth Living?, is revived as part of the 2011 season at the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, with Mary Haney in the role of Lizzie Twohig. Robinson’s fiction includes Eight Short Stories (1919). In 1931 he publishes a biography of Bryan Cooper, who had recently died. In 1951, he publishes Ireland’s Abbey Theatre, the first full-length history of the company.

He publishes an edited edition of Lady Gregory’s diaries in 1947. In 1958 he co-edits with Donagh MacDonagh The Oxford Book of Irish Verse. He is also a director and producer, in 1930 producing a play by Irish playwright Teresa Deevy called The Reapers. In 1931 he is co-director of A Disciple along with W.B. Yeats and Walter Starkie.

Melancholic and alcoholic in later years, Lennox Robinson dies in Monkstown, County Dublin, on October 15, 1958. He is buried St. Patrick’s Cathedral.


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Death of Irish Dramatist Seán O’Casey

Seán O’Casey, Irish dramatist and memoirist, dies of a heart attack in Torquay, Devon, England on September 18, 1964. A committed socialist, he is the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

O’Casey is born John Casey at 85 Upper Dorset Street, in the northern inner-city area of Dublin on March 30, 1880. He is a member of the Church of Ireland, baptised on July 28, 1880 in St. Mary’s parish and confirmed at St. John the Baptist Church in Clontarf. He is an active member of Saint Barnabas until his mid-twenties, when he drifts away from the church.

As O’Casey’s interest in Irish nationalism grows, he joins the Gaelic League in 1906 and learns the Irish language. At this time, he Gaelicises his name from John Casey to Seán Ó Cathasaigh. He also learns to play the Uilleann pipes and is a founder and secretary of the St. Laurence O’Toole Pipe Band. He joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and becomes involved in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, established by James Larkin to represent the interests of the unskilled labourers who inhabit the Dublin tenements. In March 1914 he becomes General Secretary of Larkin’s Irish Citizen Army. On July 24, 1914 he resigns from the ICA, after his proposal to deny dual membership to both the ICA and the Irish Volunteers is rejected.

In 1917, his friend Thomas Ashe dies in a hunger strike and it inspires him to write. He spends the next five years writing plays. O’Casey’s first accepted play, The Shadow of a Gunman, is performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1923. This is the beginning of a relationship that is to be fruitful for both theatre and dramatist but which ends in some bitterness. It is followed by Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926).

The Plough and the Stars is not well received by the Abbey audience. There is a riot reported on the fourth night of the show. His depiction of sex and religion offends some of the actors who refused to speak their lines. W.B. Yeats intervenes and describes the audience as “shaming themselves.”

In 1928, Yeats rejects O’Casey’s fourth play, The Silver Tassie, for the Abbey. It is an attack on imperialist wars and the suffering they cause. The Abbey refuses to perform it. The plays O’Casey writes after this include the darkly allegorical and highly controversial Within the Gates (1934), which is set within the gates of a busy city park based on London’s Hyde Park. It closes not long after opening and is another box office failure.

Over the next twenty years, O’Casey writes The Star Turns Red (1940), Purple Dust (1943), Red Roses for Me (1943), Oak Leaves and Lavender (1945), Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (1949), The Bishop’s Bonfire (1955), and The Drums of Father Ned (1958). In 1959, O’Casey gives his blessing to a musical adaptation of Juno and the Paycock by American composer Marc Blitzstein. The musical, retitled Juno, is a commercial failure, closing after only 16 Broadway performances. Also in 1959, George Devine produces Cock-a-Doodle Dandy at the Royal Court Theatre and it is also successful at the Edinburgh International Festival and has a West End run.

On September 18, 1964, at the age of 84, O’Casey dies of a heart attack, in Torquay, Devon. He is cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium.


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Birth of Actress Maureen O’Hara

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Maureen O’Hara, Irish actress and singer, is born Maureen FitzSimons on August 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, County Dublin. The famously red-headed O’Hara is known for her beauty and playing fiercely passionate but sensible heroines, often in westerns and adventure films. She works on numerous occasions with director John Ford and longtime friend John Wayne and is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

O’Hara grows up in the Dublin suburb of Ranelagh to an “eccentric” devout Catholic family and aspires to become an actress from a very young age. She trains with the Rathmines Theatre Company from the age of 10 and at the Abbey Theatre from the age of 14. She is given a screen test, which is deemed unsatisfactory, but Charles Laughton sees potential and arranges for her to co-star with him in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Jamaica Inn in 1939. She moves to Hollywood the same year to appear with him in the production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and is given a contract by RKO Pictures. From there, she goes on to enjoy a long and highly successful career, and acquires the nickname “The Queen of Technicolor,” which she detests, believing that people see her only for her beauty rather than talent.

O’Hara gains a reputation in Hollywood for bossiness and prudishness, avoiding the partying lifestyle. She appears in films such as How Green Was My Valley (1941), her first collaboration with John Ford, The Black Swan (1942) with Tyrone Power, The Spanish Main (1945), Sinbad the Sailor (1947), the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947) with John Payne and Natalie Wood and Comanche Territory (1950).

O’Hara appears in her first film with John Wayne, the actor with whom she is most closely associated, with Rio Grande (1950). This is followed by The Quiet Man (1952), her best-known film, and The Wings of Eagles (1957), by which time her relationship with Ford has deteriorated. Such is her strong chemistry with Wayne that many assume they are married or in a relationship. In the 1960s O’Hara increasingly turns to more motherly roles as she ages, appearing in films such as The Deadly Companions (1961), The Parent Trap (1961), and The Rare Breed (1966).

O’Hara retires from the industry in 1971 after starring with Wayne one final time in Big Jake but returns 20 years later to appear with John Candy in Only the Lonely (1991). In the late 1970s, O’Hara helps run her third husband’s flying business in St. Croix in the American Virgin Islands, and edits a magazine, but later sells them to spend more time in Glengariff in Ireland. She is married three times and has one daughter, Bronwyn, born in 1944 to her second husband.

Her autobiography, ‘Tis Herself, is published in 2004 and becomes a New York Times Bestseller. In November 2014, she is presented with an Honorary Academy Award with the inscription “To Maureen O’Hara, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars, whose inspiring performances glowed with passion, warmth and strength.”

Maureen O’Hara dies of natural causes in her sleep at the age of 95 on October 24, 2015, at her home in Boise, Idaho. O’Hara is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia next to her late husband Charles Blair.


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Birth of Seán Ó Riada, Composer of Irish Traditional Music

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Seán Ó Riada, Irish composer and arranger of Irish traditional music, is born John Reidy in Cork City on August 1, 1931. Through his incorporation of modern and traditional techniques he becomes the single most influential figure in the revival of Irish traditional music during the 1960s.

Ó Riada receives his primary education at St. Finbarr’s College, Farranferris. He moves to St. Munchin’s College in Limerick where he completes his Leaving Certificate in 1948. He plays violin, piano, and organ, and studies Greek and Latin classics at University College Cork, with Aloys Fleischmann and graduates in 1952. While at College, Ó Riada is the auditor of the UCC Philosophical Society.

Ó Riada’s career begins in 1954 as a music director at Radio Éireann, after which he works at the Abbey Theatre from 1955 to 1962. He lectures in music at University College Cork from 1963 until his death in 1971. He leaves a lasting influence as founder and director of the ensemble Ceoltóirí Chualann beginning in 1961. Ó Riada becomes a household name in Ireland through his participation in Ceoltóirí Chualann, compositions, writings, and broadcasts. His best-known pieces in the classical tradition include Nomos No. 1: Hercules Dux Ferrariae (1957), but he becomes particularly famous for his film scores Mise Éire (1959) and Saoirse? (1960).

In 1963 Ó Riada is appointed lecturer in music at University College Cork. He moves to Cúil Aodha in West Cork, an Irish-speaking area, where he establishes Cór Chúil Aodha, a male voice choir.

He becomes involved in Irish politics and is a friend of several influential leaders. Ó Riada drinks regularly at a local pub which still advertises itself as being his local. He develops cirrhosis of the liver. He is flown to King’s College Hospital in London for treatment and dies there on October 3, 1971, two months after his 40th birthday. He is buried in St. Gobnait‘s graveyard, Baile Bhuirne, County Cork. Willie Clancy played at his funeral.

Two schools are named “Scoil Uí Riada” after him – a Gaelscoil in Kilcock, County Kildare, and another in Bishopstown, Cork City. In 2008, a life-sized statue is erected in the grounds of Sépéil Naomh Gobnait, Cúil Aodha.


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The Abbey Theatre Destroyed by Fire

abbey-theatre-fire-1951Fire destroys the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on July 17, 1951, with only the Peacock, a small experimental theatre in the ground floor of the main theatre surviving intact. The play earlier in the evening closes with soldiers on stage singing Keep the Home Fires Burning.

In February 1961, the ruins of the Abbey are demolished. The board has plans for rebuilding with a design by the Irish architect Michael Scott. On September 3, 1963, the President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, lays the foundation stone for the new theatre. The Abbey reopens on July 18, 1966, at its new location at 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin 1.

The Abbey Theatre first opens its doors to the public on December 27, 1904. Despite the loss of the original building to the 1951 fire, it has remained active to the present day. The Abbey is the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world. From 1925 onwards it receives an annual subsidy from the Irish Free State.

In its early years, the theatre is closely associated with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival, many of whom are involved in its founding and most of whom have plays staged there. The Abbey serves as a nursery for many of the leading Irish playwrights and actors of the 20th century, including William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Seán O’Casey, and John Millington Synge. In addition, through its extensive programme of touring abroad and its high visibility to foreign, particularly American, audiences, it has become an important part of the Irish tourist industry.


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Executions of Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke, & Thomas MacDonagh

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Patrick Pearse, Thomas Clarke, and Thomas MacDonagh are executed by firing squad in the Stonebreakers’ Yard at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916. Pearse, Clarke, and MacDonagh are three of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic.

Just three days after the end of the 1916 Easter Rising, the first military courts martial sits on May 2, 1916. Pearse, Clarke, and MacDonagh are immediately sentence to death. The three are taken that evening to the disused Kilmainham Gaol and are shot at dawn the following morning.

Patrick Pearse is born in Dublin in 1879, becoming interested in Irish cultural matters in his teenage years. In 1898, Pearse becomes a member of the Executive Commmittee of the Gaelic League. He graduates from the Royal University of Ireland in 1901 with a degree in Arts and Law. Pearse’s literary output is constant, and he publishes extensively in both Irish and English, becoming the editor of An Claidheamh Soluis, the newspaper of the Gaelic League. He is a keen believer in the value of education, and establishes two schools, Coláiste Éanna and Coláiste Íde, devoted to the education of Irish children through the Irish language.  Pearse is one of the founding members of the Irish Volunteers and the author of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He is Commander in Chief of the Irish forces and headquartered in the General Post Office (GPO) during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Thomas Clarke is born on the Isle of Wight in 1857, the son of a soldier in the British army. During his time in America as a young man, he joins Clan na Gael, later enduring fifteen years (1883-1898) of penal servitude for his role in a bombing campaign in London. In 1907, having returned from a second sojourn in America, his links with Clan na Gael in America copper-fastens his importance to the revolutionary movement in Ireland. He holds the post of Treasurer to the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and is a member of the Supreme Council from 1915. Clarke is the first signatory of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic through deference to his seniority. Clarke is also stationed at the GPO during Easter Week. Clarke tells his wife during his final night that he is relieved he is going to be executed because his greatest dread is that he would be sent back to prison.

Thomas MacDonagh is a native of Tipperary, born in 1878. He spends the early part of his career as a teacher. He moves to Dublin to study and is the first teacher on the staff at St. Enda’s School, the school he helps to found with Patrick Pearse. MacDonagh is well versed in literature, his enthusiasm and erudition earning him a position in the English department at University College Dublin. His play When the Dawn is Come is produced at the Abbey Theatre. He is appointed director of training for the Irish Volunteers in 1914, later joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). MacDonagh is appointed to the IRB military committee in 1916. He is commander of the Second Battalion of Volunteers that occupies Jacob’s Biscuit Factory and surrounding houses during the Rising.

Immediately after the executions, Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond warns British Prime Minister Herbert Asquith that “if any more executions take place in Ireland the position will become impossible for any constitutional party or leader.”

Asquith himself warns Sir John Maxwell that “anything like a large number of executions would…sow the seeds of lasting trouble in Ireland.”

These warnings fall upon deaf ears as thirteen additional executions take place in the following days.


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Birth of Henry Wilfrid Brambell in Dublin

henry-wilfred-brambellHenry Wilfrid Brambell, Irish film and television actor best known for his role in the British television series Steptoe and Son, is born in Dublin on March 22, 1912.

Brambell is the youngest of three sons born to Henry Lytton Brambell, a cashier at the Guinness Brewery, and his wife, Edith Marks, a former opera singer. His first appearance is as a child, entertaining the wounded troops during World War I. Upon leaving school he works part-time as a reporter for The Irish Times and part-time as an actor at the Abbey Theatre before becoming a professional actor for the Gate Theatre. He also does repertory at Swansea, Bristol and Chesterfield. In World War II, he joins the British military forces entertainment organisation Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA).

His television career begins during the 1950s, when he is cast in small roles in three Nigel Kneale/Rudolph Cartier productions for BBC Television, The Quatermass Experiment (1953), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), and Quatermass II (1955). All of these roles earn him a reputation for playing old men, though he is only in his forties at the time.

It is this ability to play old men that leads to his casting in his best remembered role, as Albert Steptoe, the irascible father in Steptoe and Son. This begins as a pilot on the BBC’s Comedy Playhouse, and its success leads to a full series being commissioned, running from 1962 to 1974 including a five-year hiatus. There are two feature film spin-offs, a stage show, and an American incarnation entitled Sanford and Son, some episodes of which are almost exact remakes of the original British scripts.

The success of Steptoe and Son makes Brambell a high-profile figure on British television, and earns him the supporting role of Paul McCartney‘s grandfather in The Beatles‘ first film, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). In 1965, Brambell tells the BBC that he does not want to do another series of Steptoe and Son and, in September that year, he goes to New York City to appear in the Broadway musical Kelly at the Broadhurst Theatre, however, it closes after just one performance.

Apart from his role as the older Steptoe, Brambell achieves recognition in many films. His performance in The Terence Davies Trilogy wins him critical acclaim, far greater than any achieved for Steptoe and Son. Although he appears throughout the full 94-minute piece, Brambell does not speak a single word.

After the final series of Steptoe and Son is made in 1974, Brambell has some guest roles in films and on television. He and Harry H. Corbett also undertake a tour of Australia in 1977 in a Steptoe and Son stage show.

Brambell dies of cancer in Westminster, London, on January 18, 1985, at the age of 72. He is cremated on January 25, 1985 at Streatham Park Cemetery, where his ashes are scattered.


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Death of Irish Actor Barry Fitzgerald

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Barry Fitzgerald, Irish stage, film, and television actor, dies on January 14, 1961.

Fitzgerald is born William Joseph Shields in Walworth Road, Portobello, Dublin, Ireland, on March 10, 1888. He is the older brother of Irish actor Arthur Shields. He goes to Skerry’s College in Dublin before going on to work in the civil service while also working at the Abbey Theatre.

Unknown to many, Fitzgerald is also a patriot. In 1916 he is a member of the Irish Volunteers and is prepared to fight in the Easter Rising on Easter Sunday when the orders are countermanded. On Easter Monday the revolution is on again, and Shields goes to the Abbey Theatre and retrieves his rifle from under the stage. He goes around the corner to Liberty Hall and joins with James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army.

He then marches to the General Post Office on Sackville Street where he fights before evacuating on Friday. He is sent to Stafford Prison in England with another famous rebel, Michael Collins, and from there they are both sent to the Frongoch internment camp in Wales. Both return to Dublin by the end of 1916, Collins to terrorise the British and Shields to return to the Abbey Theatre stage.

By 1929, he turns to acting full-time. He is briefly a roommate of famed playwright Sean O’Casey and stars in such plays as O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock and the premiere of The Silver Tassie.

Fitzgerald goes to Hollywood to star in another O’Casey work, The Plough and the Stars (1936), directed by John Ford. He has a successful Hollywood career in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), And Then There Were None (1945), The Naked City (1948), and The Quiet Man (1952). Fitzgerald achieves a feat unmatched in the history of the Academy Awards. He is nominated for both the Best Actor Oscar and the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the same performance, as Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way (1944). He wins the Best Supporting Actor Award. This feat will likely never be matched as the Academy Award rules have since been changed to prevent this. During World War II, Oscar statues are made of plaster rather than gold due to wartime metal shortages. Being an avid golfer, Fitzgerald later breaks the head off his Oscar statue while practicing his golf swing.

Fitzgerald has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for films located at 6220 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television located at 7001 Hollywood Blvd.

Fitzgerald returns to live in Dublin in 1959. He dies of heart failure on January 14, 1961, and is buried at Deansgrange Cemetery in Dublin.