The curtain call man
Ray Donohue is the quintessential curtain call man. In life as well as on the boards.
"My debut in Kilcullen was in 'The White Headed Boy', in 1957," he recalls. "I remember a night, standing in the wings and rehearsing my lines. The cardinal sin then was to make a late entrance, so I made sure that I opened the door on time and got onto the stage ... except that my script was still in my hand."
Ray participated in all of the John B Keane productions for which Kilcullen Drama Group made its name across the country in those days. He played Danger Mullaly in 'Many Young Men of Twenty', Teddy Heelan in 'Big Maggie', and both Packie and Petey in 'The Man from Clare', at different times.
"In 'The Field' I played the three main parts -- Tadhg, the 'Bird', and 'The Bull' McCabe. And I did two parts together in 'The Playboy of the Western World', one of them Pegeen Mike's father."
Drama was strong in Kilcullen in those days, no more than it is again today, but it was different, Ray feels.
"It was a different era. All the old characters were around, like Bill Malone, Julia Morris, and Harry Clarke. Dick Dunphy was the same as myself, only a young fella. Drama was a very important thing to the town though, it was like any of the sports clubs, it was always there."
Of course it was also the era when Paddy Melia came to the fore as a director, taking time from his favourite work of managing the Town Hall Cinema as well as his then day job in Newbridge Cutlery.
"In the cinema we had Jimmy Kearns and Matt Dunlea, selling and taking the tickets respectively. There were other people who were also a key part of the town's fabric then, like Simmy Doyle, Paddy McGarr, Christy Connelly ... they all did their party pieces before the films in the days when you didn't have to charge tax if you had live performers as well."
During that time Ray worked in Berneys pub for 'old' Pat Berney, and he can still recall the regular customers like 'Kings' Neill and Arthur Taplis. It was a rings pub, with the rings board located on the back of the door leading to the Berney family's sitting room.
"The rings would make an awful crack, and old Pat used to get annoyed when he'd want to listen to the radio in the sitting room."
It's 48 years ago since Ray worked in Berneys, but he remembers well his first week there, when he was given an unexpected extra duty. "Young Tom Berney had a few sheep out on the farm, and I had to go out there and help shear them."
Ray left Kilcullen in 1970 to go and live in Newbridge, where he'd been working in Irish Ropes since 1961. That job was to last him 40 years, directly and indirectly. "In 1984 I took early retirement, but they brought me back after three months to retail and wholesale carpets for them ... that was the days when Tintawn was what everybody was using."
It was really terrible stuff, pure sisal twine and very rough to the touch. "But it was like a Ford car, you couldn't wear it out. And it was reversible, so you could get two wears out of it."
After 11 years of this he retired again. But in yet another 'curtain call', he came back to work as manager for seven years in the Irish Ropes Social Club.
Ray subsequently worked for ten years in the Red House, and for over 11 years he worked in Kerdiffstown House, the Vincent de Paul holiday facility for old people at Johnstown. He finished there just three weeks ago.
And now his latest 'curtain call' has brought him back to where he started, behind the bar in Fallons ... the pub until recently known as Berneys. It is a different place to when he started out with old Pat.
"I'm also now six kids and eight grandchildren later," he adds with a grin, reminding the Diary that he is in his 68th year. And he looks a long way yet from the Final Curtain.
It must be all this repetitive retiring.
Brian Byrne.
