The grand old lady of South King Street

TWO names, more than any others, immediately come to mind when thinking of the Gaiety Theatre – Jimmy O’Dea and Maureen Potter. In the 1920s, O’Dea teamed up with Harry O’Donovan to form O’D Productions and they produced their early shows in the Gaiety.

 

Then in the 1930s, they were invited into the theatre on a regular basis and their productions continued there until O’Dea’s death in 1965. They were particularly associated with the annual Gaiety Christmas Pantomime. With O’Dea, the others most associated with those pantos were Maureen Potter and Vernon Hayden.

Hayden played the Gaiety almost constantly for 50 years and he was cast as the panto villain so often that he became known as the best baddie in the business. The first licence granted to the Gunn brothers to run a theatre included permission to stage pantomimes, which they first did in 1873. The other great Dublin panto venues – the Theatre Royal and the Queens – have long since gone but the Gaiety Panto carries on in what is Ireland’s longest established producing theatre.

The Gaiety has just been associated with pantomime. Its very first production was Goldsmith’s She Stops to Conquer. Following Dana’s Eurovision win with All Kinds of Everything, the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast from the Gaiety in what was RTÉ’s first colour outside broadcast seen by a worldwide audience of 400 million. It hosted other TV broadcasts. Clodagh Rodgers, who finished fourth in that 1971 contest with Jack in the Box later presented The Clodagh Rodgers Show from the Gaiety and it was also the venue for the still remembered Ó Riada sa Gaiety. The Gaiety also played an important role in the history of modern Irish drama with its Dublin productions of most of the plays of John B Keane. The theatre has also hosted the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company and the Dublin Grand Opera Society.

Others to have graced its stage include Sara Bernhardt, Sybil Thorndike, Joan Sutherland and Julie Andrews together with Peter O’Toole and Noel Purcell. The theatre has started setting bronze handprints in the footpath and these include prints by Brian Friel, Anna Manahan, Maureen Potter, Des Keogh, Rosaleen Linehan and John B Keane.

The Gaiety was designed in the style of European opera houses of the 19th century. Amazingly, it was built in a record time of just 25 weeks as, by all accounts, the builders literally worked around the clock. Within two years, improvements were carried out.

The theatre passed into the ownership of Wall and Elliman in the 1930s and they remained the owners until 1965 when they sold to Eamonn Andrews Studios. One of their great achievements has to have been succeeding in keeping the Gaiety open all through World War II using solely Irish performers.

Ownership passed to Denis Desmond during the 1990s. He was responsible for the present state of preservation of the theatre. The entire theatre was refurbished and refitted and Desmond spent over €2.5 million on the project. The Department of Arts and Tourism also contributed to the project. They ensured that the Grand Old Lady of South King Street is one of the top theatres in the country.

The Gaiety Theatre opened for the first time on November 27, 1871, 141 years ago this week.