Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 16 January 2025

Making an Irish Free State City – Fr O’Flynn Produces Shakespeare Plays

In the mid-1920s, the Cork Shakespearian Company presented full or extracts of Shakespearean plays at places across Cork City and County. On the first weekend of August 1925, against a backdrop of Capel Island and the beaches of Youghal, the Cork Shakesperean Company staged outdoors The Merchant of Venice at Knockadoon.

A Cork Examiner journalist on 4 August 1925 remarked on the training of the players and their speech training by Fr O’Flynn; “These players have all been moulded to their present ability by long and careful training, by receiving full explanations of the sense and meaning of the plays they study, by long and careful instruction in all the many details of elocution and by continuous practise of such teaching. The society is comprised of youth of both sexes, mainly from the North Parish, Cork”. 

The Cork Examiner article went on to point out how young the players were and Fr O’Flynn’s detailed work; “Some of these young people when they left school had ideas on Shakespeare in no way different to those of thousands of others not; alone in Cork and elsewhere. In the mere pronunciation of words, they were also no different…Their elocution is an outstanding feature, rhythm clarity of words, full light and shade within over short sentences. The players accord all the credit to the Rev J C O’Flynn, who is a perfect elocutionist and faultless in ear, able to discern the very least falling off in tone in either speech or song…the play was a veritable triumph, and within that fact the strongest evidence was that held by the rapt attention of the audience”.

In 1926, the Cork Shakespearian Company rented a premises over a sweet factory in John Redmond Street. In the early days The Loft, as it was known, was never meant to be more than a temporary home for the Cork Shakespearean Company. Indeed, the room in which rehearsals were held was quite small, but the Company persevered and made the most the space over the ensuing decades.

In early summer 1927 Fr O Flynn rented Cork Opera House and staged a week-long season of six Shakespearean plays during the first week of May. A journalist in the Cork Examiner wrote half a page on the endeavour and focussed on the importance of the Loft’s civic work;  

“From a humble beginning this troupe has developed into an important civic asset, whose good work and unbounded enthusiasm should help to propagate that spirit of culture which has hitherto been only scantily ‘apparent. Denied the measure of support to which their efficiency entitled them, they have not, as was the case with so many other societies, succumbed to neglect; but, quite on the contrary, seem to have acquired a greater keenness now inspiring thorn to attempt an ambitious task which deserves the reward of success”. 

The article also focusses on bringing the work of Shakespeare alive for students and not that students learn off lines from Shakespearian plays for the sake of it; The journalist remarked; “The present system develops the memory only – the imagination and the personality it fails to reach. Consequently, when the pupil leaves the school he brings with him, as Pope said, ‘a load of learned lumber in his head’, and a very natural inclination to bother his brains no more with the philosophy of Shakespeare or anybody else of his ilk”.

Fr O’Flynn’s civic work also evolved into financial cost. Hiring the Cork Opera House for a week in 1927 was £200 – a steep financial commitment. Fr O’Flynn attained the week at a discount for £175. The week did not include rehearsal time and literally the Company walked straight onto the stage to perform.

The cost of costumes for six plays was also steep. Tom Vesey, the Treasurer of the Cork Shakespearean Company, was tasked with attaining costumes from London based costume sellers. Fr O’Flynn borrowed £300 from the bank and guaranteed by O’Flynn Brothers, Victuallers. By train and ship, Tom made it to London where he filled six hampers with costumes, swords and wigs.

Back in Cork Fr O’Flynn launched a robust publicity drive. Posters, hand bills, press releases, and word of mouth were all harnessed to make all citizens aware of his attempt to bring Shakespeare to Cork.

Fr O’Flynn penned a letter to the editor of the Cork Examiner in which he hoped that the public would co-operate with the Cork Shakespearean Company in making their week at Cork Opera House a successful one. He wrote: “On their part, no effort, individual or collective, has been spared to make effective the staging of the dramas of the immortal Bard. Even such details as costumes and accessories have been carefully looked after by a small and zealous committee…everything humanly possible has been done to render the production of each particular drama and educative entertainment for the audience and an aesthetic treat”.

A further letter to the editor of the Cork Examiner appeared on Monday, 2 May 1927 – the Monday of the week long performances where Fr O’Flynn made a further plea for local support; “I can guarantee to those who attend any one of the plays this week that they will see a performance by the youths and maidens of our city which will be as good as, if not better than, any professional performance of Shakespearean play that we have seen in Cork for some years back…The spectator will no longer see the youths and maidens of his city, but the characters of Shakespeare’s imagination living in the very flesh. I trust especially that the patrons of the boxes, circles and stalls will be generous in their support for, I regret to remark, that from personal observation these parts of the theatre are practically empty whenever anything of a local endeavour is running”.

To be continued…

Caption:

1287a. Plaque on Linehan’s Sweet Shop, John Redmond Street, Shandon commemorating the Cork Shakespearean Company’s The Loft, present day (picture: Kieran McCarthy)