This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com

Tag: Sive

Listowel Drama Group and a poem about football



Listowel Drama Group




I went to St. John’s on Friday night last. Arsenic and Old Lace was a triumph on so many fronts. I cannot single out any one performance because they were all excellent. The set is the talk of the town and all the productions values were so high that it will be a hard act to follow. Well done everyone and a huge congratulations to Imelda Dowling Garvey who directed it all like a professional.

This is an old photo from Vincent Carmody’s North Kerry Camera of the Drama Group’s cast of The Playboy of the Western World in 1950.

The following is a potted history of the group from the latest programme notes.

On the 12th January 1944 the group presented its first full length play in The Plaza, The Troubled Bachelors by A.J. Stanley. The play was produced by Bryan MacMahon, one of the founders of the group. Niall Stack is the sole surviving member of that  cast.

Eamon “The Seanchaí’ Kelly joined the group in 1945. He produced Bryan MacMahon’s The Bugle in the Blood which went on to The Abbey in 1949. Eamon met his wife, Maura O’Sullivan when they were both members of Listowel Drama Group.

In 1954 the group won The All Ireland One Act Drama Festival with George Fitzmaurice’s The Magic Glasses. Among the cast was Michael O’Connor, father of our present Canon Declan O’Connor.

In 1959 Brendan Carroll produced John B. Keane’s Sive. Listowel Drama Group’s finest hour had come. They won the All Ireland Drama festival’s top prize in Athlone and Listowel Drama Group achieved the status of legend locally and nationally.

In 1993 The Master performed to packed houses for sixteen nights.

The group has certainly lived up to its motto;

“The Stage shall never Die”.

……………………………

Jimmy Moloney, Senior, whose family have very close connections with The Listowel Drama Group has given me two photos to share with you.

Back Row: Bill Kearney,    Andy O’Mahoney?   , John Kirby, Brendan Carroll, Thomas O’Connor, Arthur Paige and Hilary Nielson

Front: Joan Paige?, Michael O’Connor, Margaret Moloney, John O’Flaherty and Nora Relihan

(I’ll post the other photo tomorrow)

Andy O’Mahony who went on to fame as a newsreader and broadcaster on RTE radio and television worked in one of the Listowel banks. While in town, he lodged with the Ashe family  of Lawlors Cake shop and subsequently with Máirín MacMahon, sister of the playwright, Bryan MacMahon.

Owen MacMahon is compiling an archive of old programmes and memorabilia relating to Listowel Drama Group. If you have any of this stuff in your attic, Own would love to see it. If you don’t want to part with it , he would be happy just to photocopy it.

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A poem for the year that’s in it;  World Cup Year

 (just to put things in perspective)


The Man who invented
football 

by Kit Wright

The man who invented football

He must have been dead
clever,

He hadn’t even a football
shirt

Or any clothes whatever.

The man who invented soccer,

He hadn’t even a ball

Or boots, but only his horny
feet,

And a bison’s skull, that’s
all.

The man who invented
football,

To whom our hats we doff,

Had only the sun for a yellow
card

And death to send him off.

The cave-mouth was the
goal-mouth,

The wind was the referee,

When the man who did it did
it

In 30,000 B.C.!

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Sew ‘n’ Pressed have moved shop.


This is where it is now, next to Paddypower in William St. If you lose your shirt, you will not have far to go for a new one.

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The shop which was trading in Moriarty’s is moving here, next to Woulfe’s Bookshop, I’m told.

4th class Convent 1932 and Sive at The Abbey

Convent
Girls 1932  4th Class 

Front L-R; Mary Granille, Greenville, Convent
Street; Peg Fitzmaurice, William Street, now Barney H; Kathleen Stokes, Charles
Street, later Ballybunion; Ann Flavin , Church Street, Bookshop; Second Row;
Anna Collins Church Street, Lawlee; Evelyn Leahy; Mairead Connell, Small Square
?; Joan Carroll deceased Wm St. Shop; ? Walsh O Connell’s Ave and Nan Connor
do; ? Enright Ballybunion Road; Peggy Dell, Charles St.,;—————–; ?
Galvin, Small Sq, Harness?; Nuala McMahon first cousin of Mairead Connell
above; ?Barrett Ennismore spotted dress; Mai Chute, Charles Street; ? Sweeney,
Greenville; Peg Galvin, Greenville. 

Third Row; Kathleen Bartisell; Eileen
Horgan of top of Church St.; Eileen Adams, Charles st. in shadow; ? Galvin
partly hidden , Billy Galvins sister; ——————-;
—————————White top; Mary Allen ? O Connell’s Ave, flowery
dress; ————Boxy dress–; ? Kelliher in white; ? Fitzmaurice , Banemore,
now Daughton, marred Stacks Mountain; ? Sullivan Innismore white Dress; Peg
Godfrey, Red cottages, Painter; ? Connell from Top of Wm, St. Mai Stack, Duagh/
Moysa?Good student; 

Back row; Eileen O Connor ?; ————— Pig tails; ?
McCarthy sister of writer; ? Connor ?; Brid Mahony, O Connell’sAve; ? Cronin
lived at back of Breens Ch. St.; Mary Doyle, Tannavalla; ————-/?,
Friend of Maura Walsh ?; Maura Walsh , Market Gate.; Agatha Murphy, butcher,
Black dress; ? Fitzmaurice; Peg Dooling, Woodford, Head sister Cherry Orchard,
Dublin; Mairead McGrath; Nano Sullivan from Hill, Ballygrennan, b 1920;
—–?Larkin 

These are the names as posted by Jer. Kennelly. Can anyone do any better?

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Ballylongford in the past



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Sive at The Abbey



Critics are unanimous in their praise of the current Abbey production of John B. Keane’s play.

The play, however and its playwright has had a troubled relationship with the national theatre. Sive was rejected by The Abbey in 1958.

Listowel Drama Group had achieved success in the All Ireland Amateur Drama Festival in Athlone in 1954 with a one act play, George Fitzmaurice’s The Magic Glasses.

Brendan Carroll was a very experienced producer and he realized that in Sive he had the makings of an overall winner in Athlone.

The play was a resounding success at the regional stages of the competition and it came as no surprise when it won outright in the final in 1959.

It was the beginning of a very successful career as a writer for John B. and as a actress for Nora Relihan.




Listowel Drama Group in a photo taken outside Dáil Eireann where they were guests of local T.D. Dan Moloney, shortly after they had won the Esso trophy in 1959.

 Margaret Dillon who gave us this photo played Sive. She is standing beside John B. in the photo. Nora Relihan is the lady in sunglasses.

Here are all the names again as provided by Kay Caball:

Front Row From Left:

Jeffrey O’Connnor (Cahirciveen,  Sheila Keane’s Husband)

Brendan Carroll   (Carroll’s,  59 William St)

Margaret Dillon     (She played Sive)

John B. Keane        

Cecile Cotter  (‘Tasty Cotter’s’ sister – Scully’s Corner used to be called Cotter’s Corner)

Nora Relihan

Dan Moloney T.D., (grandfather of our mayor, Jimmy Moloney)

Second Row Left to Right

John Cahill,  (Main St.,)

Hilary Neilsen, (Bridge Road)

Siobhan Cahill (Main St.)

Bill Kearney  (Lr. William St. – where Nora Canty’s is now)

Harry Geraghty  (Bank of Ireland or maybe National Bank?)

Eamon Keane 

Mrs. Peggie Walsh  ( The Square)

Back Row, Left to Right

John Flaherty  (Charles St)

Margaret Moloney (Gurtinard, grandmother of the current mayor of Listowel, Jimmy Moloney)

Kevin Donovan (Upper William St)

Seamus Ryle  (Nora Relihan’s brother)

Ina Leahy  (Leahys, Market St)

Dr. Johnny Walsh

Peg Schuster  (John B’s sister)

Sive is a hard hitting nuanced tragedy about country life in Ireland in the early part of the twentieth century. The character of Mena, one of the play’s villains, is a masterpiece. Forced by poverty to marry a man she does not love and forced by circumstances to share her home with a wicked taunting old hag and a child whose presence is a constant reminder to her of her own childless state, she is a deeply unhappy character.

I believe that she saw marriage to the repulsive but wealthy Seán Dota as an opportunity for Sive to have a comfortable home and luxury for the rest of her life. Mena herself would have jumped at such a chance in her day. She is the product of an age when marriage was a contract about money and status and love was a bonus. Sive has grown up with a different value system and sees love and marriage as intrinsically linked.

The singing tinkers, who alternatively bless and curse the Glavin house, are a remnant of  the wandering poets who lost their patrons with The Flight of the Earls and were then forced to live by their wits. They add a sinister dimension to the plot.

The theme of the play is a common one in drama; Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story but in Sive John B. held a mirror up to Irish society at the time and rural Ireland saw characters they recognised from real life. In many cases they saw themselves.

Sive in Athlone 1959, Lou Reed and Dublin City Marathon

Big Day for Drama in Listowel

The pinnacle of achievement in amateur drama is a win at The All Ireland Drama Festival in Athlone. Listowel Players did it in style in 1959 with a brand new play.  Sive, with its hard hitting gritty realism broke the mould in Irish drama and held a mirror up to rural Irish society.  The play is an Irish Romeo and Juliet. It has become a classic and is as gripping today as it was in 1959.

I am indebted to Margaret Dillon and Kay Caball for photos and memories of Listowel Drama group’s great win at The All Ireland Drama Festival in Athone with their production of John B. Keane’s Sive.

Bryan McMahon, on behalf of The Listowel Players accepting the
Esso Trophy for Best Play at The All Ireland Drama festival.

Left to Right; Brian Brennan, Siobhan
Cahill, Brendan Carroll, Bryan McMahon, President Listowel Drama Group,  Representative of Esso (the sponsors of the trophies) , Margaret Moloney, Chairman Listowel
Drama Group, Margaret Dillon, Nora Relihan.

Front Row From Left:

Jeffrey
O’Connnor
(Cahirciveen,  Sheila Keane’s Husband)

Brendan
Carroll
  
(Carroll Henigan, William St)

Margaret
Dillo
n     (She played Sive)

John
B. Keane        

Cecile
Cotter
 
(‘Tasty Cotter’s’ sister – Scully’s Corner used to be called Cotter’s
Corner)

Nora
Relihan

Dan
Moloney T.D.
, (grandfather of our mayor, Jimmy Moloney)

Second Row Left to Right

John
Cahill,
 
(Main St.,)

Hilary
Neilsen
, (Bridge Road)

Siobhan
Cahill
(Main St.)

Bill
Kearney
  (Lr.
William St. – where Nora Canty’s is now)

Harry
Geraghty
 
(Bank of Ireland or maybe National Bank?)

Eamon
Keane 

Mrs. Peggie Walsh 
( The Square)

Back Row, Left to Right

John
Flaherty
 
(Charles St)

Margaret
Moloney
(Gurtinard, grandmother of the current mayor of Listowel, Jimmy Moloney)

Kevin
Donovan
(Upper William St)

Seamus
Ryle
 (Nora
Relihan’s brother)

Ina
Leahy
 
(Leahys, Market St)

Dr.
Johnny Walsh

Peg
Schuster
 
(John B’s sister)

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My tribute to the late Lou Reed…. his lovely 9/11 poem




Laurie if you’re sadly listening

The birds are on fire

The sky glistening

While I atop my roof stand watching

Staring into the spider’s clypeus

Incinerated flesh repelling

While I am on the rooftop yearning

Thinking of you

Laurie if you’re sadly listening

Selfishly I miss your missing

The boundaries of our world now

changing

The air is filled with someone’s

sick reasons

And I had thought a beautiful

season was

Upon us

Laurie if you’re sadly listening

The phones don’t work

The bird’s afire

The smoke curls black

I’m on the rooftop

Liberty to my right still standing

Laurie, Evil’s gaunt desire is

Upon me

Laurie if you’re sadly listening

Know one thing above all others

You were all I really thought of

As the TV blared the screaming

The deathlike snowflakes

Sirens screaming

All I wished was you to be holding

Bodies frozen in time jumping

Bird’s afire

One thing me thinking

Laurie if you’re sadly listening

Love you

Laurie if you’re sadly listening

Love you.

(Written for The New York Times Magazine on Oct. 6, 2001)

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Yesterday’s Dublin City Marathon

Interestingly the race was won by a man called Hehir, (pronounced hare).

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