|
|
|
|
|
____________________________________________________________________________________________
|
||
|
The Olympia Theatre, Dame Street, Dublin Formerly The Star of Erin Music Hall / Dan Lowrey's Music Hall / Dan Lowrey's Palace of Varieties / The Empire Palace Theatre
Above - The Olympia Theatre, Dublin in March 2009 - Courtesy Des Kerins
|
||
|
In 1879 Dan Lowrey acquired the Hall and on the 22nd of December that year he opened it as the The Star of Erin Music Hall. In August of 1881 his son took over, Dan Lowrey Junior, and renamed the building Dan Lowrey's Music Hall, and in 1889 it was renamed again, this time to Dan Lowrey's Palace of Varieties. Dan Senior died the following year. Right - Dan Lowrey's Music Hall - From the detailed book: 'The Lost Theatres Of Dublin' by Philip B Ryan. The Music Hall closed in February of 1897 and was completely rebuilt and reopened in November of the same year as the Empire Palace Theatre. The Theatre was eventually renamed The Olympia Theatre and ran successfully for many years until it was forced to close after major structural damage to the building occurred in November 1974 when parts of the proscenium arch and the ceiling above collapsed during a break in rehearsals for a production of West Side Story, which was to have opened that night.
Left - The Canopy of the Olympia Theatre, Dublin in March 2009 - Courtesy Des Kerins The stalls bar was turned into a small theatre and performers from all over appeared nightly to swell the restoration fund. Eventually, after a huge sponsored walk by just about everyone in the profession brought so much attention to the Theatre's plight that people were queuing up at the box office to donate money, the City Councilors decided to back their efforts and placed a preservation order on the Theatre and added to the fund themselves. The Theatre was restored and redecorated at a cost of £250,000 and on the 14th of March 1977 it was reopened, and is still open to this day. |
||
|
Above - The Olympia Theatre, Dublin during the run of 'The Adventures of Davey Crockett' in December 1956 / 1957 - Courtesy Gerry Atkins whose partner in the production was Jill Gascoine |
||
|
Infinite Variety: Dan Lowrey's Music Hall 1879-97 Top of the year's Bill was Arthur Lloyd, (December). He was a Music-Hall man in a way that was new to Lowrey. He waved no flags. The speech and the attitudes of the common man everywhere, brilliantly delineated, were the themes of his art. He was expensive, taking a nice slice out of the fortnight's takings; but he did entice a little of Dublin's bon ton, and many who had never before ventured down the tunnel to Crampton Court now flocked to see the Face that had launched a thousand Song-Sheets. Lloyd sang in evening-dress, a Scots voice with London overtones:
Left - The Circle and Upper Circle Entrances of the Olympia Theatre, Dublin in March 2009 - Courtesy Des Kerins. An unknown Scots boy doing the round of the Saloons and the Penny Gaffs, he was on the starvation list and to make ends meet he took a job with a hatter in the Strand. There he learned to shake off the trappings of the fustian Stage and to listen to how people really talked. (This is not correct, Arthur's father Horatio Lloyd was born in a shop on the Strand where his father was a hatter. This is often mistakenly attributed to Arthur being a hatter. M.L.) In the streets he came alive to attitudes and speech habits; he picked up catch-phrases, spotted a comic sense of pathos, a vocal delight in sheer nonsense, a knack of cutting pretension down to size; and he distilled something of all this into the songs he composed and presented. In his time he published more than two hundred of these ditties, all of them of considerable popular appeal.
The Pavilion was a new venture, recently renovated as a refreshment-cum-variety premises by a pair of Jewish restaurateurs, Loibl and Sonnenhammer. An air of champagne and the glitter of diamonds lingered there from the earlier establishment, The Argyll Rooms, while at the same time it had the aura of a tavern from its days as The Blackhorse Inn. Shrewd Lloyd seized the essential: combine the Argyll air with the Blackhorse aura, the diamonds with the beer, a place on the stage and in the bars and balconies for both the bon ton cravat and the New Cut coat of the fishmonger. Lloyd could in his own style combine both, and he engaged and trained artistes to do the same. He made a fortune and a name, and The 'Pav' became the Centre of the World. The face that came into the light at Dan's was heavy, homely and dimpled when he smiled. The voice was of a rich timbre with a wealth of comic tone. He was a bigger draw than the Chicks even, and with Ashcroft, Pat Kinsella and Old Dan himself, he established the Male Comic as the heart of the Night Rite. Text from 'Infinite Variety: Dan Lowrey's Music Hall 1879-97' - Courtesy John Grice. |
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
The
Olympia Theatre originally opened as the Empire Palace Theatre in November
The
Theatre closed and that looked like it might be the end for the building.
The local Council seemed to favour demolition, and the London owners
of the Theatre were in agreement, but there was much local opposition
and a restoration fund was begun. Tireless efforts by the staff of the
Theatre and local people, organising raffles and sponsored walks, followed.
He
had been trained from childhood as an Actor in an 