“Go and See This” – Review of “All Souls’ Night”

Regardless of the tuppence increase, the Sligo pints are still being bought in the thousands each night. There’s TV congregations glued to “My Son, My Son” and Superman and James Bond have processions coming to see them. Yet the Drama Circle who’ve provided the now “prosperous” Sligo with a little bit of culture through good and bad times can only muster a crowd of twenty two for one of their productions. O, Mother Ireland, Yeats would be fully entitled to go turning in his much visited grave. If the performance was bad, I suppose you could excuse such a massive insult by the Sligo public. But the truth is the cast and the backstage crew squeeze the last drop of blood out of “All Souls’ Night” and they deserve to be showing to packed houses.

It’s a three act play, written by Northerner Joseph Tomelty, and dealing with the trials of a sea faring family, the Quinns. The woman of the house is a crochety old bitch, her husband has got used to her wicked ways, but their only remaining son is as hot-tempered as he is anxious to rise above his poverty-stricken, simple surroundings. The work is given life by the family’s bitter war with the sea. You’ve only to think back to the Achill grief of a fortnight ago to imagine the struggle that the author has cleverly interwoven into the play. It’s by no means a perfectly written play. It lacks sufficient humour relief to highlight the more tragic scenes, and the third act in particular is slow moving. But it has sufficient ingredients to let a good cast and production team show their talents and this Sligo Drama Circle team simply revel in the challenge.

Only seven players are required for the production so the Circle can provide that depth of talent throughout the cast that “All Souls’ Night” demands for it to be successful. Liam Mc Kinney could not be more at home in the part of the tragic likeable father John Quinn. It’s a fine tribute to Mary Quigley (Katherine Quinn) that she should depict badness with such utter conviction in this, her stage debut,. John Caheny plays Michael, the couple’s ambitious young son, and he fits into the role nicely, with the minimum of fuss. Molly, played by Sheila Horan, is the very essence of harmless mischief and it is simple to imagine that she would “throw back her head laughing at her husband drunk” as she promises her prospective father-in-law she’d do one time during the play. Kieran Hickey, who plays Mr. Thurston, and Joe Meehan (Tom Byers) have parts of lesser importance, but they, and Tony Mc Niffe (who plays Stephen Quinn) but doesn’t have a word to say – nevertheless he never puts a foot wrong!) carry themselves with such “professionalism that they give the cast a consistency of strength throughout.

It’s a play with some marvellously gentle scenes – Molly teaching John to read; the grief-stricken husband handing back a deposit book which his wife has hoarded all through the marriage; the impatient son quarrelling with his girlfriend; the father and son rising above their “station” to look for money from the bank manager. These combine to make “All Souls’ Night” something more than a night’s entertainment. The performance has its faults. In the “talking from the dead scene”, for example, the voices are so faint that you’d swear the hotline from heaven must have run into Post Office difficulties. In the beginning, too, some of the cast have a hint of bother with the Northern accents, but as time goes by and they become involved in their roles, the failings diminish. These are but minor details and not matters of conflict when one is dealing with Amateur Drama.

They say people get the politicians they deserve. If that can be applied to drama. then the Sligo public are being well and truly spoiled. For God’s sake, will you recognise how lucky we are to have such a marvellous drama group and get a few friends and go along to see “All Souls’ Night”. The publicans, dance promoters, television and film stars wouldn’t mind you going off for just one night.

Production team: Continuity, Mary Matthews; Sound, Pauric Foran; Set Design, Liam Mc Kinney; Setting, Tommy Lindy and Tony Mc Niffe; Costumes, Damian Brennan and Bernadette Forde; Lighting, Barry Mc Kinney; Produced and Directed, Pauric Foran and Liam Mc Kinney.

from The Western Journal, August 3rd, 1979