THURLES TALES: Theatre-loving and far from 'the graveyard of drama'

When Noel Coward tunefully advised Mrs Worthington to never put her daughter on the stage he might have usefully told my late mother, Bridie, to do likewise with her eldest son.

Despite having a lifelong association with theatre, both amateur and professional thespian glory has eluded me. And more often than not, I have convinced the wide world of Oscar material I ain't.

Yet I am from theatre-loving Thurles which, despite the wry observation by the late great Shakspearian actor, Anew McMaster, that Thurles is the Graveyard of Drama, when he played to an audience of two or three in Delahunty’s New Cinema in Thurles many years ago, the home of the GAA has produced many playwrights and many top actors and has featured with honour at many of Ireland’s 36 drama festivals annually, including both the All-Ireland Open Drama Festival at Athlone and the All-Ireland Confined Finals in Rossmore, Cork and elsewhere.

Top Thurles thespians include Margaret McCormack Purcell of Littleton, a village once referred to by Lord Haw Haw in his broadcasts from Germany during World War 2 and hometown of leading musician, Warrant Officer Larry Slattery, the first British Prisoner of War captured during that war Margaret, a product of the Brendan Smith Theatre Academy acted with the late great Siobhan McKenna in a professional production of Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World.

But she has produced and acted with both Thurles Drama Group and Holycross/Ballycahill Drama Group near Thurles which hosts the annual Tipperary Drama Festival.

My own theatrical debut was at nine years of age when at the invitation of a magician I climbed up onto the stage of Delahunty’s Cinema I was the only brave child to take up the invitation.

However, I was no supporting actor for the strangely dressed and quite awesome-looking showman. I was all cockiness and cheeky initially on stage until the magician handed me an illuminated skull in a glassjar.

It frightened the wits out of me, and I jumped off stage having first, cried “Mammy!”

Not the most memorable or edifying of stage debuts. Though the magician mentioned my bravery as the only volunteer that night was to be noted by the heckling and hissing juveniles in the pit. No doubtsome of these chappies are making it hot for politicians now.