A ROYAL CONCERT

Rockettes/Royalettes - Phyllis Conroy/Medlar on right.
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There I was blogging away when the invitation from Conor Doyle dropped into my mailbox. The Theatre Royal Concert at the Mansion House, no less. So, when the day came, I polished my shoes (once a year), exchanged the pullover for a jacket (very occasionally), didn't bother with a tie (never these days), and set out for the Lord Mayor's official residence.

What, I wondered, was a Theatre Royal Concert? I was familiar with Conor's wonderful illustrated talk on the Theatre Royal. I'd been at it twice: once in City Hall and again in the Mansion House. The second time was with the husband of one of the Royalettes and the daughter of another, both these people being related to me on the mothers side.

Lord Mayor, Críona Ní Dhálaigh welcomes the audience

But a concert? And introduced by no less a person than the Lord Mayor herself?

This certainly looked promising.

A musical evening

Well, it turned out to be an updated version of the talk interspersed with live music appropriate to the occasion.

Gerry Noonan (baritone)

Gerry has a fine rich voice which he projected without the aid of any of these new fangled microphones and the like.

Dara MacMahon (mezzo-soprano)

And Dara likewise. They sounded great, both individually and in duet. Lovely blend.

Pauline Cooper

And Pauline, standing in for Tommy Dando and Peggy Dell among others.

Judy Garland

Conor had no shortage of stories, particularly about visiting international stars. Take Judy Garland who packed out the place for a week, and then sang from a side window in Poolbeg Street to the crowd who hadn't been able to get in.

Danny Kaye & Copenhagen

And Danny Kaye who not only packed out the place for a week, but broke all the rules by singing songs from his forthcoming film which hadn't yet been released. And he sang on into the night after the orchestra, who were only paid up to the official closing time, had long gone home. A great favourite with the Dublin taxi drivers he was.

Packed house

The audience was predominantly female and elderly. I could probably risk the term oulwans, being an oulfella myself at this stage. Many of them had been to performances in the Royal before it closed in 1962.

They sang along with a gusto that belied their age. And I wasn't exactly quiet myself.

The Damper Song

But when it got to the Damper Song they just lost it. Jumping up and down and making spiral staircase motions with their arms. It was nothing short of magnificent and the official performers rose to the occasion in great style. Even Conor forgot about the dicky bow and joined in.

Rathgar song/monologue

Then we had Jimmy O'Dea's Rathgar song delivered as a monologue. Now this can be a tricky one, particularly if you do it in Rathgar.

The refrain paints Rathgar as a posh refuge from the vulgar masses that inhabit the rest of the city. But there is a little something here that you shouldn't miss. Within Rathgar itself, even in those days, there were serious social distinctions. We lived for a time with my granny in Orwell Gardens, Rathgar. Now that's the other side of the fence from Orwell Road in Rawthgore. So you'll see where I'm coming from.

And I'm now living down the road from Killester, which is mentioned in the song as a sort of Molly Malone territory where they wouldn't know a pig's knuckle from a crubeen.

"Biddy Mulligan"

And as for Jimmy O'Dea himself. Not only was he one of the great theatre characters of his day, he was Conor's godfather, in the religious sense, that is.

Jimmy's best known character was Biddy Mulligan the Pride of the Coombe and the audience again rose to the occasion and the room resonated to the chorus of this signature tune.

A Josef Locke song - Goodbye!

And Josef Locke with his military type choruses.

He had a reputation as a ladies man and was a friend of CJH, as I remember.

Conor, under Jimmy's watchful eye

Conor clicked his way through a profusion of photos, movie clips and theatre programmes. All under the watchful eye of his godfather.

I can't not mention the Roman Catholic Church before we finish. It wasn't just the cinema and the dirty books that incurred their wrath.

Jack Doyle when he finished boxing became a singer but the Church objected to him appearing on stage in the Royal because he was living with a divorced woman. He left her and married the film star Movita in Westland Row Church (where I was baptised). They were then allowed appear on the Royal. Unfortunately the marriage did not last; they divorced and she then married Marlon Brando. Movita died only last year (12/2/2015) aged 98. Jack had died, a pauper, in 1978.

A mellow duet

As we drifted towards the end of the night, the singing took on a mellow tone ...

Conor joins in the singing

... and even Conor himself was infected and promptly launched his singing career in these magnificent surroundings.

Team Royal

The team, including the Lord Mayor, got standing ovations and rapturous rounds of applause and shoutings.

Conor and Jimmy

And then it was all over, and there was a quiet moment of reflection, with godfather and godson.

Jimmy O'Dea

This fine bust was commissioned by Jimmy O'Dea himself in response to one put up by that theatrical Mícheál Mac Liammóir. Jimmy made sure his pedestal was a few inches higher than Mícheál's. The busts were originally in the Gaiety.

The likeness to Jimmy is striking. You'd be waiting for it to open its mouth.

Jimmy and Fans

And before Conor puts Jimmy's head in a bag and heads off home with it, a short pause for a photo with some if its fans. The lady in the middle is the sister of a Royalette now living in San Francisco. So there.

Pete St John

I had the good fortune to meet Pete St. John recently at the launch of his March for Brian Boru at Colm Lennon's talk on historical perspectives of the Battle of Clontarf.

Although he has written many songs, including the familiar Fields of Athenry, the one that always gets to me is Dublin in the Rare Oul Times. I used to sing it round the place and it was always an open question whether I would get to the end or not.

I'm not entirely sure why, but for me it is a tremendously evocative song that involves my own growing up, my parents, and more recently resonances from the wider family as I delve into my family history.

I have four generations of coopers and relations on the stage of the Theatre Royal apart altogether from my own memories of it. I photographed the Pillar before, during and after its demise. My mother's people were from the Liberties (just about) and the march of the grey unyielding concrete has continued apace.

So I'll just leave that song to speak for itself.

-1-
Raised on songs and stories,
Heroes of renown,
The passing tales and glories
That once was Dublin Town.
The hallowed halls and houses,
The haunting childrens rhymes
That once was Dublin City
In the rare ould times.

Chorus
Ring a ring a rosey
As the light declines
I remember Dublin City
In the rare ould times.

-2-
My name it is Sean Dempsey,
As Dublin as can be
Born hard and late in Pimlico,
In a house that ceased to be.
By trade I was a cooper,
Lost out to redundancy.
Like my house that fell to progress,
My trade’s a memory.
And I courted Peggy Dignan,
As pretty as you please,
A rogue and child of Mary,
From the rebel Liberties.
I lost her to a student chap,
With skin as black as coal.
When he took her off to Birmingham,
She took away my soul.

Chorus

-3-
The years have made me bitter,
The gargle’s dimmed me brain,
‘Cause Dublin keeps on changing,
And nothing seems the same.
The Pillar and the Met. have gone,
The Royal long since pulled down,
As the grey unyielding concrete,
Makes a city of my town.

Chorus

-4-
Fare thee well sweet Anna Liffey,
I can no longer stay,
And watch the new glass cages,
That spring up along the Quay.
My mind’s too full of memories,
Too old to hear new chimes,
I’m part of what was Dublin,
In the rare ould times.

Chorus

Cracked or What?

What you see above purports to be a Google Street View^© cat. In its photomapping of the world's towns and cities Google Street View has picked up many strange phenomena but it appears this cat is not one of them.


This is the osriginal photo and it comes from Ottowa, Canada. But never mind, we're never short of true examples nearer home.


This is a Google Street View of Hawkins Street, Dublin, from Burgh Quay. The tall building in the centre of the picture, on the site of the old Theatre Royal, is the headquarters of the Government Department of Health.

The Minister for Health, Dr. James Reilly TD, has been afflicted with all sorts of problems since he took office. He has been accused of rowing back on various pre-election promises and, most recently, his Minister of State resigned, citing difficulties with the way the Minister was running the show, and particularly the role played by old style lobbying in influencing the location of health centres. There is also the implication that Reilly's gruff style fell far short of the collegial model needed for the smooth running of the ministerial team, not to mention the two party coalition Cabinet.


Some may feel that these disagreements are in large part down to a conflict of personalities and styles, but Google Street View reveals that there are more serious structural problems involved here. The very building itself is clearly in a state of unresolved internal conflict which threatens to tear it apart.

From an aesthetic point of view this would be no great harm as it is one of those 1960s type office bloxes that shot up all over Dublin at the first whiff of 20th Century economic progress. Some might simply put it down to The Curse of the Royal, a magnificent theatre which had been part of the city's lifeblood for yonks.

I first noticed this particular flaw in the building when researching my Dr. "Who" Reilly cartoon some weeks ago. The resulting cartoon is below.


[Note: (11/5/2013)  In the original of this post yesterday I took the cat to be genuine but was uneasy at not being able to see the patchlines. When I went to try and source it I discovered it had been tricked. I have amended the post accordingly. I also found that Google Street View had already (7/5/2013) acknowledged this on its fun page. ]

Update 13/9/2013
Just to add a positive note. A colleague has drawn my attention to the Google Street View Performance below. It comes from Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland. You can click on the coordinates here, invoke the little Street View Man and drive past, or just enjoy the strip below.

Click image for larger version

The Royal

The fourth in a series of five lunch-time lectures on Alfie Byrne's Dublin: Dublin in the 1930s was given by Conor Doyle on Dublin's Theatre Royal in Dublin City Hall on 23 October 2012.

Conor is the son of Chick Doyle, the famous International badminton player in the 1950s and 1960s. He is a nephew of Noel and Ursula Doyle, who performed in the Royal, and godson of Jimmy O'Dea, to whom Ursula was married. So he was more than qualified to do this talk and he told it like a family story, a theatre family, that is.

And there wasn't a dry eye in the house when he was finished.

That was hardly surprising. There was something about the Royal that didn't apply to the other theatres in my time. It was the people's theatre. Dubliners felt a sense of belonging when it came to the Royal, and its passing was like a death in the family. It is the line in Pete St. John's song Dublin in the Rare Old Times that chokes me up every time.

The final version of the Theatre Royal was built in 1935. It was huge, with seating for nearly four thousand people. It attracted a host of international stars in its day. It was barely on the road when WWII broke out and that put an end to the international stars for the duration of the war. But this gave a huge opportunity to a host of Irish performers, who never looked back, even when the international stars started coming again after the war was over.

Conor had a raft of photos to show and stories to tell, and there were more contributions from the audience after the lecture proper. Some of these stories can be heard in the NearFM radio programmes referred to below. For others you will just have to wait and see if Mary Clarke, our city archivist, can persuade Conor to repeat his lecture in the future.

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A few personal notes.

This is Connie Connell, one of the Royalettes, who married my mother's cousin Paddy Medlar.

And this is Phyllis Conroy, also one of the Royalettes, who married Paddy's brother John.

I was always a great fan of Jack Cruise, one of the stars of the Theatre Royal. He also did seasons in Butlins in the 1950s, which is where he gave me this autographed copy of his stage character, John Joe Mahockey

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Conor, along with Aine Clancy and Susan Tomelty, has produced a four-part, four hour long, radio documentary on the Royal for Near 103.3FM, a Northside community radio station headquartered in Coolock.

Check out an earlier lecture in the Dubliners: One City, One Book series earlier this year.

And you might like to follow up on Alfie Byrne, or on an aspect of his participation in the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, or see the seat in his honour at the junction of Alfie Byrne Road and the Clontarf Road (on the Northside).

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