By: PM O’Sullivan
“The smell of the bakeries was just gorgeous…”
Mary Cradock is talking about Kilkenny in the mid 1970s. Settling there simultaneously felt like destiny and the lucky side of mere chance.Her production of Shirley Valentine, with Clare Gibbs in the title role, will shortly be staged in The Home Rule Club. This woman knows all about how life can change, the contingencies of yearning. She understands how life inexorably alters in any case over time.
Go back to 1973, to that walk down High Street. “I can still smell it,” Cradock elaborates. “You had Molloys Bakery. You had Crottys Bakery. You had Mullhalls Bakery. You had nothing but it.
“Not even the Brewery smell… It outdid the hops!”
Mention of that business? Highly significant. Smithwicks Brewery brought her to the town.
As she explains: “My husband Jim went there as a brewer in 1973. I was pregnant with Mark. We were first in a Brewery flat in James’s Street, where the Market Cross carpark is now. Graham Norton’s parents lived above us at the time.”
Mary Cradock is admirably candid, 50 years on, about the wrench involved: “It was a huge move for me, because all my friends were in Dublin. I think Jim wanted to make sure that I’d settle into Kilkenny, that I’d be happy.”
One path to contentment swerved through theatre. They went with this approach: “Jim knew that Brendan Corcoran, who worked in the Brewery, was involved in local drama. When Mark got a bit older, Jim asked Brendan to meet me, late 1970s or so. There was a reading in the Metropole Hotel for Billy Liar.
“I was nervous going in. But I read the part, and I got the part, that of Billy’s mother. That was my first role in Kilkenny.”
That young woman had a strong background in drama. First, she drew on a family vein. Her father, Eddie Ivory, was a Garda from Goresbridge, County Kilkenny. A veteran of the Old IRA, he eventually received a posting in Sixmilebridge, County Clare. There be began seeing the local national school teacher, Mary Dolan from Galway City.
As their daughter glossess: “My father did the Sergeant’s exam, and got it. But a Sergeant’s post didn’t come up in Sixmilebridge. So he stayed a Guard, stayed in Sixmilebridge, married my mother.
“There are a lot of sliding door moments in all our lives. There has to be a be a bit of a Shirley Valentine in all of us. You have to suspect there has to be another life. Or at least the possibility of it.”
Eddie Ivory was a handsome charismatic man. Even now, warm affection plumps his daughter’s voice: “His family were all musical, and into performing as well. They lived and breathed it. He used to play every instrument by ear.”
She continues: “My mother was actually invited to join the Taibhdhearc in Galway. But my Granny didn’t think it was a suitable profession for a young lady. So my mother went off to Mary Immaculate [College] in Limerick and became a teacher. She had a trained voice, a beautiful singing voice.”
That switch from Dublin in 1974, while difficult, nevertheless felt like a sort of homecoming: “It was very nice for me to end up in Kilkenny. I knew all about the place from my father. I wasn’t allowed to cheer for anyone else in hurling only Kilkenny.”
“We were pictured once at a match, myself and my father. He’s throwing his hands in the air. And I’m a little one, clapping. It’s in a book of photographs of ‘Old Ireland’, that sort of thing.”
Background wise, there was also specific training. Girlhood moved on: “After national school, I was sent away to boarding school, Thurles, the Ursulines. They sent me there to make a lady out of me… And I was in plays and musicals.
“After school, I went to do my Diploma in the Royal Irish Academy of Music and Drama. Then I joined the Young Dublin Players. It was the Sixties, and I met Jim later on. One of the Raidió Éireann Players, Ivan Hanley, was our Director. He really taught me an awful lot about stage technique.”
That meeting with Brendan Corcoran ran old interests from a new angle. “Everything developed from there,” Cradock notes. “Geoff Rose came from Sligo and introduced us to pub theatre. Geoff also wanted to start up summer theatre with one act plays. We all joined in.
“A few years later, I directed my first play, A Galway Girl by Geraldine Aron. We entered it in the one act festival circuit. Ann Widger and Dónal O’Brien were the two characters. We got to the All Ireland Final, in 1984, and we won.”
True story that the actors wore their underwear inside out, for luck? Cradock laughs deep: “Yes, it’s true! They did. It was by mistake, first. Then word spread. So we all wore our underwear inside out.
“And it was a real sleepy Sunday afternoon, when we performed in the final. And I was saying: ‘Jeez, oh God… Are we at nothing?’ But the judges loved it.”
Momentum smiled. As Cradock details: “We continued with one act plays. We changed our name to Gaslight [Theatre Company]. All the time, we were fundraising for a theatre. We were told that if we could raise so much money, £50,000, that the Council would match it. The Savoy [Theatre] became available, and eventually we got it.”
That moment proved its own reward: “It was just wonderful to have a theatre in Kilkenny, our own one. Because there had been one in Stallards, there had been one in the old tax office on The Parade. In there was Rehab for a while. I actually taught lip reading in there for years to people who were hard of hearing.
“I’d classes in there at night. And I often wondered would Thomas Moore’s ghost appear to me! Because he did a play in there, I do know.”
Momentum beamed: “We got the theatre and Ger [Cody] became our Manager. To keep money coming in, all of us would volunteer to put on a production. In 25 glorious years, as Watergate Productions, we did plays, pantos, musicals. The whole range.”
The decades melt. Now is a different time. Serious illness last year altered Mary Cradock’s life and priorities. This still vibrant woman turns movingly plain: “I’m so happy that I have a hobby that I can do. And I can rehearse at home. Shirley Valentine is a one person show, which helps.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do this last year. I’m delighted to be able to prove to myself that I can get back to a bit of normality. Or to my normality, at any rate.”
Was Shirley Valentine a project hankered after for years? She remains candid: “Never thought of it, before now. Most of all, I simply wanted something compact, where it could be rehearsed at home. I wanted a situation where if a rehearsal went at short notice, for whatever reason, we weren’t down the cost of room hire. It has worked out really well.”
Mary Cradock never lost the enthusiasm of that delighted girl at a hurling match. “I love helping to create a character,” she emphasizes. “I love acting myself, of course. I love getting into the skin of a character. And therefore I like to help someone else do it.
“Clare is a superb actor. She is going to be brilliant.”
Then a credo, a Kilkenny credo: “That’s what happens in all our productions. Everybody chips in. You see, we all volunteered, all those years in the Watergate. We were so used to it, to doing it as amateurs.
“But hopefully with a professional touch.”
Shirley Valentine runs at The Barnstrorm studio space at The Home Rule club from Juy 24 to 27. Nightly at 7.30pm
