Search Results for 'Siobhan McKenna'

AN ELDERLY woman, rapidly going senile, lies bedridden, where, to the distress of her daughters, she persists in telling and re-telling a strange story, yet never comes close to finishing it.

ONE OF the definite highlights of the current Town Hall Theatre season is Decadent Theatre Company’s new staging of Conor McPherson’s Port Authority which starts a five-night run next week.

NEXT WEEK at the Town Hall Theatre sees the west of Ireland premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s powerful play Doubt: a Parable.

Our photograph today shows two young girls, Marie Scanlon and her sister from Shantalla, standing in front of Shantallow house in the mid 1940s. Prior to the building of the council houses we know as Shantalla, this house was more or less surrounded by green fields. At one time the house was owned by a distinguished engineer named William Blood, who was related to the Maunsell family from across the road in Fort Eyre. Blood’s nephew was George Johnson Stoney who was professor of natural philosophy in Queen’s College, Galway, from 1853 to 1857, and who lived in this house during that time. He was a distinguished amateur scientist who worked for a time as Lord Rosse’s astronomer at his large telescope in Birr. Stoney was the person who coined the name ‘electron’. He later became the secretary to the Queen’s Colleges, so he made a significant contribution.

The gushing garden fountain, giant ‘triffid’-like plants, towers, and parapets are all dead giveaways. This is no ordinary entrance; this is no formulaic hotel.

It is exactly 30 years since Thos McDonogh and Sons presented Druid Theatre, for a peppercorn rent, with an old warehouse in Chapel Lane, in Galway’s Latin Quarter. It was far from a Latin Quarter at the time. Like other parts of the old city most of it was falling apart. Old 18th and 19th century buildings were roofless and derelict, a home for cats and rats. But it had a rough diamond look about it too with its pawnbrokers, ‘Nora Crubs’, the always warm Tigh Neachtain’s (if you could get in!), the Pedler and Kenny bookshops, Sonny Molloy’s very modest women’s undergarments shop, and the larger than life Mrs Mc Donagh, who showed us all that there was more to the fish industry than a stinky grilled herring, fried mackerel, and the auld cod.

ONE OF the definite highlights of this year’s Galway Arts Festival sees the welcome reunion of playwright Tom Murphy with Druid Theatre for a new production of his great play The Gigli Concert, directed by Garry Hynes.