Life
1900-1971; b. Tunbridge Wells, Kent; grandson of Tyrone Power; moved at
six months to family home at Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan; ed.
Wellington and St. John’s Oxford; joined Oxford Playhouse, 1923,
and left for BBC; Director Scottish National Theatre Soc, Glasgow, for
two years; worked with BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp;; Festival Theatre,
Cambridge; and Westminster Theatre, London; dir. plays for Sadler’s
Wells and Old Vic, 1931; Old Vic. director, 1951; productions in Australia,
England, America, Finland, and Israel; director of Shakespeare festival
at Stratford-on-Avon, Ontario; Director Old Minnosota Classical Theatre,
Minneapolis; hon. degrees from QUB, TCD; Chancellor of QUB, 1963-1870;
Chairman of Ulster Theatre Council; knighted, 1961; directed Eugene McCabe's
play on Swift at the Abbey, with Micheál MacLiammóir in
the title role; started a jam factory to provide employment in Newbliss’;
writings include Theatre Prospect; Top of the Ladder; In
Several Directions: A View of Theatre (1963); and A Life in the
Theatre (1960); d. May; bequeathed Annaghmakerrig to the Irish Government
to serve as an artists’ retreat. DIB BREF DUB
References
Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London:
Thames & Hudson); b. Tunbridge Wells, gt-grandson of Tyrone Power;
one of the earliest BBC producers in BBC Belfast; lifelong interest in
theatre Northern Ireland; Sadlier’s Wells and Old vic, London, 1933-1952,
as director; forte pageantry and farce; director of festival at Stratford,
Ontario, and at the theatre which commemorates him in Minneapolis; developed
the thrust stage; left his home to the Irish nation as a retreat for artists.
Cathach Books, Catalogue 12 lists ‘Squirrel Cage’ and Two Other Microphone Plays (London 1931) [author-signed copy listed £65.]
Whelan Books (Cat. 32) lists A Life in the Theatre (Readers’ Union 1961); James Forsythe, Tyrone Guthrie, A Biography (Hamilton 1976).
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Quotations
Account of Bishop’s Bonfire riot: ‘By lunchtime on the
day of the performance you could not get into the street where the theatre
stands. At three in the afternoon the mounted police were called to clear
the crowds. When the doors opened the police had to be called again, because
about a thousand people were storming into a gallery which holds less
than three hundred. There was another storm when Catholic students from
the national university started to boo in the streets, because they regarded
O’Casey as a renegade Irishman. They were answered by Protestant
students from Trinity College who made a counter-demonstration in O’Casey’s
favour./The streets were ringing with boos and cheers when the little
lady who leads the theatre’s orchestra - violin, ‘cello, and
a exceedingly upright Ibach - struck up, for reasons which she and her
God alone can have known, with a spirited rendering of The bells of Aberdovey. “No”, yelled the gallery, “Irish music!” “Make
it Irish” Programmes were folded into paper darts and hurled at the
orchestra pit. The rest of the theatre took up the cry, “Make it
Irish, Irish, Irish!” and likewise pelted the orchestra pit, where
the little lady in a flutter of fear, paper darts and sheet music, was
replacing Middleton’s Leek with the Shamrock./Meantime,
the students, hearing the noise within, redoubled their efforts in the
street. Soon however, for reasons which I do not know, the national faction
withdrew, leaving Trinity in possession of the field. “We want O’Casey”,
they chanted. “We want O’Casey”. The curtain was now up
and the actors were finding the competition rather severe. The day was
saved by a fatherly old policeman. he stood in a doorway at the top of
a flight of steps:”Listen, he said to the Trinity boys. “Are
youse fellers for O’Casey?” “We are. We want O’Casey!” “Well, then for Jesus sake will ye fuck off and let them that have
pid for it hear what yer man wrote!”/And straightaway they fucked
off, leaving behind them a silence which could be felt, into which the
lines of the play fell like thin rain into a bucket./The actors, all keyed
up to do or die, had spent themselves in the play’s first forty minutes.
At first the audience played up - supposedly anti-Irish or anti-clerical
lines were received with jeers and hisses or, by the minority, with exaggerated
laughter and applause. But gradually it became apparent that the jokes
were not of the finest vintage, the satire not very pointed, the plot
a little “hammy” and the performance, in spite of manful efforts
by Eddie Byrne and Sean Kavanagh, a little amateurish. By the end of the
second act, the excitement had fizzled away. The audience was like a wedding
party after the departure of the bride; after the elation of the nuptials
and the unwonted champagne comes the reaction; a melancholy, punctuated
by hiccups./By the end of the last act torpor was turning to positive
vexation. Cyril Cusack came forward at the curtain call and made a long
prepared speech in Irish. After thanking the audience for its wonderful
reception, he gave a harangue on behalf of tolerance and liberty. Under
this final douche of cold water, The Bishop’s Bonfire, which had
never quite blazed, fizzled into a heap of damp ashes. (Guthrie, A
Life int he Theatre, Hamish Hamilton 1960, pp.267-69.)
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On Carrickmore Festival: ‘I think it must be about the nearest thing left to the sort of event which the Athenian Festivals may have been.// Carrickmore is a village of 200 people in the wilds of County Tyrone - and that's getting pretty wild. They put up a hall, which holds over a thousand people, and once a year they have a week of plays - amateur groups, by invitation from all over Ireland. They place is PACKED, nobody goes to bed all night. After the play they sit up drinking and tearing to pieces what they have seen, with the incredible acumen and malice of stage-struck Irish.[...] From what I've heard, this really is what Theatre's about - a sort of occasion which simply doesn't exist any more in the professional situation and hasn't, I think, existed since Kean's time. The essence being an intelligent, madly keen audience (p.129) which, instead of being sated with drama (breakfast to bedtime, cradle to grave - on the squirt) is avidly, passionately desirous, And that does NOT mean uncritical adorers. Quite the contrary.’ (quoted in Desmond Rushe, ‘Drama: Regional and Dublin’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (Autumn 1971), pp.129-32; p.130). Rushe remarks, that this passage ‘explains Guthrie's attitude, and why he worked so much with companies that were marginally professional, if at all, and why he chose to devote his talents to out-of-the-way places. It may also explain why he would not consider becoming Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre when an unofficial delegation travelled to Co. Monaghan a few years ago in an effort to involve him.’ (p.130).
Notes
Guthrie
directed Eugene McCabe's play on Swift at the Abbey, with Micheál
MacLiammóir in the title role, and had been going, before his death
to direct a new play by Jack White. (noted in Desmond Rushe, ‘Drama: Regional
and Dublin’, Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (Autumn 1971), pp.129-32;
p.130).
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