Crubeens, sheebeens and the Coal Quay: The colourful life of Katty Barry

The latest offering in Marion Wyatt's series of plays about Cork life will be streamed online

Thu, 04 Feb, 2021 - 20:30

Colette Sheridan

It was inevitable that theatre director and writer, Marion Wyatt, would get around to creating a play about one of Cork's most colourful characters, Katty Barry.

Wyatt, who has written The Sunbeam Girls, Shawlies and Dockers, is a keen documenter of Cork social history that translates into entertaining shows. Katty Barry: Queen of the Coal Quay, is a work of fiction, based on anecdotes, folklore and memories. It has a cast of five playing multiple roles, with Marie O'Donovan playing Katty Barry.

Wyatt, who set out to stage the play at the Cork Arts Theatre last year to an audience of socially distanced people, saw it being cancelled twice due to Covid. In December, the play was filmed without an audience and will soon be accessible online.

Barry, who died in 1982 in her seventies, presided over a shebeen on Dalton's Avenue off Cornmarket Street until it was shut down in the late 1960s. Formerly a shop run by her mother, Barry, who had a good nose for business, turned it into an eating house, selling crubeens and drisheen. But the real selling point was the alcohol that she served there, despite not having a licence.

Barry was repeatedly fined. But she carried on blithely, in the knowledge that some of her customers were the judges and barristers in the courts. (She used to take photographs of her clients and hide them. Possible blackmail material, no doubt.) The then Cork Examiner described this singular woman as being the personification "of a people and a culture peculiar to a particularly colourful and indigenously Cork milieu."

Wyatt says that the question the play poses is: how could this vivacious woman end up being almost homeless on the street?

"As Katty went on in life, she became disoriented and relied a lot on her sup, the drink. Her demise in that sense is a sad element. She drank a lot and was quite a pity but was wonderfully cared for by her neighbours. She seemed to have what is now called dementia."

The play is set between the shebeen, Dalton's Avenue. and Dennehy's pub. "She'd sit there and if someone bought her a drink, she'd start to answer questions. I thought that to bring her to life, she could be in the Cork Arts Theatre with a whiskey in front of her, addressing the audience."

At one point in her life, Barry used to go to Dennehy's three times a day, for a small whiskey and a glass of stout.

Born in Dalton's Avenue, Barry, in her later years, could be found lost and alone trying to get into her old home that has now been replaced with apartments. Barry was to live out her life at No. 6, Corporation Buildings, across the road from her former establishment.

In her heyday, Barry, whose premises was raided, ran a lively house. "The big match days were celebrated. I've even put in a love story. She had many suitors but she never married. I don't believe she needed any man. In fact, I'd imagine no man was strong enough for her. You could say she was feminist. She was hugely independent. Nobody was going to rule her life."

In her shebeen, alcohol was taken in cups and mugs and candles were lit as there was no electricity there. "You get people trying to create that kind of ambience now."

When Wyatt initially started researching Barry's life, she didn't meet much success. "People wouldn't share information with me. My belief is that some people in the city who knew her wanted to protect her memory and make sure she wasn't turned into a fool. But I don't shy away from the aspects of Katty's life that made her life not pleasant. Sadly, she used to scream on the street and call out the names of people from her life."

While Wyatt's take on Katty Barry's life is warts-and-all, the play has met with the approval of Barry's grandniece and grandnephew. It promises to be lively.