Rebel Revels: The return of Cork Opera House's summer-season spectacular
Frank Duggan, the former Cha, a veteran of Cork Opera House's Summer Revels
Frank Duggan laughs as he recalls an onstage mishap at Cork’s Opera House. The event, many years ago when the city’s much-loved annual variety show, Summer Revels, was in its heyday, literally knocked him off his feet.
“One particular night I was standing in the wings with David McInerney, who was a fine baritone singer who would also be involved in the sketches,” Frank, 89, recalls.
“We were waiting for our cue, and the cue came, and the next thing I tripped over the end of a curtain. I brought both of us down, right out onto the stage in front of the audience.”
Frank’s tumble landed him at the feet of the waiting Michael Twomey, who was in character as Miah – one half of the enduringly popular comedy double-act Cha and Miah, with Frank assuming the role of Cha, Miah’s dim-witted sidekick.
They performed together over the course of an astonishing 42-year showbiz career before retiring the act in 2012.
While Cha and Miah’s sketches were a fixture in Summer Revels, Michael, a titan figure in Cork theatre who passed away in 2017, was also director, producer and writer with Summer Revels and he hadn’t taken kindly to Frank’s onstage stumble.
“My first line was with Michael Twomey and he nearly ate the face off me!” Frank says, with a shake of his head and a chuckle. “My goodness. But these things happen and the show must go on. Twomey was always saying that – the show must go on.”
For 21 consecutive years, the show most certainly did go on: Summer Revels was a phenomenally popular part of Cork’s cultural calendar throughout the 1970s and ’80s.
At its peak, Frank remembers, audiences would pack into the Opera House for a sold-out run of eight weeks straight.
“It did exceptionally well every year without fail,” he says. “Michael would start putting the show together in April. I think it had a very good formula. The essence of variety is just that – variety. We’d always have a very good opening chorus and then Billa would come out after the opening chorus to have a word with the audience and there was nobody better for that.
“Then you’d have music and a sketch which might involve Michael and myself and Billa and Paddy Comerford, then after the sketch there might be Irish dancing or something.”
Billa, of course, was the legendary Billa O’Connell, another stalwart of Cork theatre and a man whose impeccable comic timing saw him bring the house down with his turns as Cork Opera House’s panto dame for many years. Frank describes him as “great company and great to work with”.
Other performers who would regularly appear in Summer Revels included comedian Paddy and, of course, singers from the Montfort College of Performing Arts, under the tutelage of their founder Eileen Nolan.
Frank is talking about the good old days of Summer Revels because this year the Revels show makes its well-publicised return to Cork Opera House.
A veritable who’s who of Leeside talent has been assembling to rehearse the 2024 Revels production, which promises to remain faithful to the spirit of the much-loved original but updated for the 21st century.
Co-directors Killian Collins and John O’Brien have gone to great lengths in researching the legacy of the original show, even holding a coffee morning for past Revels stars, including Frank, to listen to their memories of the show.
The impressive cast is 100% Cork and includes former RTÉ The Den star Declan Wolfe, Michael Sands from The Young Offenders, Cormac Mohally from The Lords Of Strut and musical theatre performers including Trevor Ryan, Therese O’Sullivan, Alex Glennon and Fiona Kennedy.
Some of the performers will be jetting in from the UK to return to the home stage – Alison Arnopp, from Bandon, has performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Claire O’Leary is fresh from a recent run in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new Wizard of Oz on the West End.
For Claire, being cast in a lead role in 2024’s Summer Revels! is very much a family affair – her sister, sketch comedian Sally O’Leary, has been one of a team of writers on the show alongside one half of the I’m Grand Mam podcast Kevin Twomey.
But Claire’s family involvement goes back much further than this latest iteration. Her mother, Valerie O’Leary, has been a teacher with the Montfort College of Performing Arts, members of whom were annual favourites in Summer Revels for over 30 years.
“She’s definitely where I got the acting bug from,” Claire says of her mum with a smile. Fresh from a read-through of Summer Revels!, Claire is excited for the role she’ll be tackling in the new production, which comes with a behind-the-scenes plot focused on the Michael Twomey-inspired theme of “the show must go on”.
“I play the stage manager, who is sort of trying to keep everyone on a calm level,” Claire explains. “She’s juggling the demands of all these divas and actors who all need different things while she also has the health and safety inspector eyeballing her.”
Spoilers aside, Claire’s character is instrumental in ultimately ensuring that the show can go on.
She says she’s been blown away by the quantity and quality of home-grown talent with whom she is sharing a stage for Summer Revels!
“Honing in on unique talent in Cork is really exciting,” she says. “It has a big nostalgia element for generations in Cork. But I think it’s going to be amazing and it’s so exciting to be part of such a fresh production with a new script. It’s different to a lot of roles in musicals where those shoes have been filled over and over again down through the years. With this role, I really feel like I can make it my own.”
For the co-directors of this year’s show, Killian and John, being tasked with reviving the Summer Revels is both a joy and a challenge.
Poring over old memorabilia from the show in its heyday, speaking to former performers and keeping this latest production faithful to the spirit of the original is a labour of love for Killian, in particular. He starred alongside Michael Twomey and directed him in his final acting role in The Outgoing Tide in The Everyman in 2015.
“Michael invented the Summer Revels as a family-friendly thing but, of course, it expanded,” Killian says.
“In some senses, Summer Revels is a sketch show and that’s what it was throughout those years of its heyday in the 1970s and ’80s. It built up over the years and eventually, at its peak, it was doing eight weeks sold out.
“It had the razzmatazz of a big spectacle show with a big live band and I guess we’re trying to hold on to that – still have the big musical numbers, an all-singing, all-dancing chorus, a teenage group and a children’s group, as well as our professional ensemble made up of an amalgamation of singers, actors, dancers, comedians, circus performers, musicians.”
But remaining true to the spirit of the original doesn’t mean that this year’s Revels won’t be getting a 21st-century makeover.
“In the original Revels, Cha and Miah were the core comedians and they had multiple sketches throughout the show. Some of those might be seven or eight minutes long,”
Killian says. “We are that TikTok generation, so that’s one thing that is a big difference – any sketches we put in are not of that length. The show has to be much more snappy.”
While it’s been “hugely exciting” working to get the production stage-ready, Killian says he’s aware that, because of the much-loved position of Summer Revels for generations of Corkonians, some of the audience will have expectations of what the Revels will be like.
But he thinks this year’s production will both feed that nostalgia and entice new audiences to the magic of live theatre.
“There’s nothing like the infectiousness of the audience around you in a full house at a fun comedy show,” he says.
“It takes on a life of its own in a way that other forms of entertainment in your home just don’t and can’t. It’s just got all the ingredients of a great night out – great fun, good lively music, big, silly characters, a live band and musical favourites that everyone knows.”
- Summer Revels! 2024 is on from July 24 at Cork Opera House. Tickets and more information: corkoperahouse.ie
