School children evacuated from theatre in blaze scare

It was a case of exit stage left — and quickly — yesterday as more than 400 schoolchildren had to be evacuated from a Cork theatre after it was thought the building had gone on fire.

It took just over two minutes to evacuate the children from the Everyman Palace on MacCurtain St as five fire brigade units rushed to the scene.

The children, from five schools in Cork and Kerry, had come to watch a staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth when the alarm was raised shortly after 11am.