abbeytheatre

Arthur Shields at Wikipedia.

Bio on IMDb www.imdb.com/name/nm0793168/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

There surely can't be two Harry C. Phibbses? Here is a statement to the Bureau of Military History 1913-21 by at least one Harry C. Phibbs.

Arthur Shields aged 15 in the 1911 census, and Harry Phibbs aged 30.

Here is an oddity via Trove ... Evidently the 'Irish Players' toured Australia in 1922 (11 years before this photo), and included J. M. Synge's 'The Playboy of the Western World' (1907) with Arthur Shields as the Playboy. Interesting to read the contemporary reviews in the newspapers.

... Arthur Shields presents the central role of the play-boy (idler) from West Ireland, with an admirable realisation of the youthful vanity and eloquence of the selfish, lonesome fugitive who wins all the races on the sands, and is adored by the girls. There was a charming scene which owed much to the winsome qualities of the brown-eyed Mair O'Neill, wherein the young poet drew a picture of her after their wedding, "the light o' seven heavens shinin' in her heart" while the girl cooed forth her faith that he was "drawing nearer and nearer to her, like the star o' Gold!" There was no marriage.

From - trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/16006272?searchTerm=Ar... Also - trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/245740763?searchTerm=A...

It's Lisgoole Abbey (according to Lord Belmont in Northern Ireland.)

Not 100% sure this is the same place. In the 1870s via Internet Archive Book Images Online book - archive.org/details/livesofirishsai01ohan/page/434/mode/1...

Is the flower bed on the right young roses? From His Lordship's blurb - "A maintained ornamental garden at the house has a rose-garden, originally developed in 1905 and replanted with 400 new roses in 1982; and a pergola. ..."

On Youtube, the Bard of Lisgoole by Joan Trimble.

Anyway, before 1910 - "The interior is a surprise, for the house was decorated about 1910 by Waring & Gillow, who provided elaborate plasterwork, a curving main stair, and an Elizabethan-style fireplace. at the same time battlements to match the tower were added across the front of the house, making it even prettier."

PORTRAIT OF RIA MOONEY, 1928 HARRY KERNOFF RHA (1900-1974) via Hoodworld

At wikipedia. Resident producer at the abbey from 1948 to 63.

The play is by Lady Gregory, from 1904, and was performed at the Abbey as late as 1961 according to its own wikipedia page. Mooney would presumably have been playing Mrs. Fallon.

This, from her impressive life in the deadly Dictionary of Irish Biography, is delicious: "Although she had always wanted to be an actress, she had not been keen to act at the Abbey. Reminiscing in an unpublished autobiography, she alluded to its members, particularly W. B. Yeats and Lennox Robinson, as ‘odd-looking people’."

Born Maria Mooney 30th April 1903.