Charleville play delves into Dromcollogher fire that claimed 48 lives
Susannah de Wrixon and Pat Ryan star in The Bell Ringer, in Charleville.
For writer/director Charlie McCarthy the production of his play The Bell Ringer is a case of bringing it all back home. Not just because the play is being staged in his home town of Charleville, but it’s a homecoming too for the story the play is based on.
The Bell Ringer is inspired by a catastrophic fire in the nearby town of Dromcollogher, on the Limerick-Cork border, in 1926, in which 48 people lost their lives. It was the Stardust of its time.
The tragedy happened in a storehouse on Church Street, which doubled up as a meeting hall. A young local entrepreneur, William “Babe” Forde (30) came up with the idea of bringing “the pictures” to Dromcollogher. He teamed up with a projectionist Patrick Downing, who brought the reels from the Assembly Rooms in Cork where he worked. (It was a sideline for Downing because the cinemas in Cork were not allowed to open on a Sunday, so the reels were not being used.)
According to Limerick historian, Dr Liam Irwin, at least 150 people, possibly more, turned up for the showing. The film was being shown on the mezzanine floor of the storehouse and the only access was by a wooden ladder on the outside of the building. “They paid the entrance fee of nine pence to Forde who was standing at a table, just inside the door on which he had placed two lighted candles, so that he could see that the correct coins were paid.”
According to Irwin, the fire broke out after the first short had been screened. One of the candles fell, or was knocked over, and set fire to the highly flammable nitrate reels which were lying unprotected on the table. Within minutes flames had engulfed the hall and the roof and the upper floor had collapsed. Many of the survivors escaped using the ladder at the front. Others made for the back of the hall, where there was a small dressing room with two barred windows. The bars were prised open and some people managed to get out that way until a woman got stuck in the window.
Forty-six people died at the scene while two injured survivors later died in hospital. More than half the victims were under 25, and 17 of them were under 18. The two youngest victims were seven. One entire household, consisting of a husband, wife, daughter, sister-in-law, and their maid was wiped out.
“The story has always haunted me,” McCarthy says. “My mother used to talk about Violet Irwin who died in the fire and was just 15, and had to be identified by the buckles on her shoes.” Subsequently he learned that there was a family connection to the event. “My father’s aunt, Ellen Madden (54), also perished in the fire, but he never talked about it.” It is believed she was the unfortunate woman who got trapped in the window when trying to escape.
The writing of the play was a lockdown project although McCarthy had researched the material ten years ago with a view to making a feature film about it. He’s a film and TV director of long-standing. McCarthy began his directing career in RTÉ where he worked on programmes as diverse as and the seminal . He has also directed a series of literary portraits of figures such as John Banville, Séamus Heaney, and Edna O’Brien, as well as dramas like and . His own TV feature, , won an IFTA award.
“But theatre was my first love,” McCarthy explains. “I’m of the generation who put on shows when we were kids. I remember once stealing a whole load of leaves from the Protestant churchyard for a cemetery scene. We were that serious.”
When he’d finished writing The Bell Ringer, McCarthy held a staged reading in Dublin for producers but the pandemic meant there was a huge backlog of projects. “We could have waited,” he says,” but we hit on the idea of staging it in Charleville, within miles of the site of the disaster. It seems right for it to play here.”
The “we” he talks of us is producer Kevin O’Shea, founder of the renowned Schoolyard Theatre in Charleville and national treasure of the amateur drama scene. O’Shea scared up some money and the play is set to open at the Schoolyard at the beginning of February.
Although the narrative of the tragedy involves a myriad of characters, the play will feature just two actors — Patrick Ryan and Susannah de Wrixon, both of them from Limerick. Ryan will play the role of the narrator Danjo, while Susannah will take on a total of 25 characters, including a crow and a dog.
“The play is highly stylised, it’s set in a fictional place — Balnafenagh — a town created out of imagination and language,” McCarthy explains. “It was really important to me to treat this material respectfully, but I felt having a local connection gave me a place to stand when writing about it.”
- The Bell Ringer runs from Wednesday to Sunday, Feb 1– 26 at the Schoolyard Theatre, Charleville. Tickets available via Eventbrite.ie
