Obituary: Barry Cassin

Actor and stage director Barry Cassin, who has died at the age of 92 years, enjoyed a long and distinguished career. His final professional engagement was last March when he did a reading of the 1916 Proclamation for RTE Radio 1.

He was involved for many years with the works of John B Keane. They first met in 1959 when Cassin was adjudicating at the All-Ireland Amateur Drama Festival in Athlone and a production of the Kerryman's play Sive won the premier award. A year later, Phyllis Ryan of Orion, later Gemini, Productions approached Cassin in Groome's Hotel, a popular gathering-place for theatre people on Dublin's Parnell Square. She handed him the script of Keane's play, The Highest House on the Mountain and, after one reading, he agreed to direct it. The production drew packed houses and marked the beginning of a professional association with the Listowel playwright which lasted into the 1980s when Cassin directed The Chastitute at the Olympia.

Directing ‘The Field’

As well as directing in 1966 the first production of

The Field

, Keane’s epic drama, Cassin also played the part of the Bishop, who tries in vain to break the local conspiracy of silence on a murder. The legendary Ray McAnally had the main role as the Bull McCabe; their long friendship was enlivened by artistic differences from time to time.

Years before, in 1951, Cassin and Nora Lever founded the 37 Theatre Club on Dublin’s Baggot Street. Their legal adviser was Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, later President of Ireland. In a basement with 40 seats, a range of avant-garde plays was staged which would not have been considered for the commercial theatre.

In 1955 he took up a position with the Radio Éireann Repertory Company. In the early 1970s he was invited by Mary O'Malley to direct plays at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast where his first production was Brian Friel's The Gentle Island. He directed satirical revues written by the late Fergus Linehan and starring Rosaleen Linehan and Des Keogh.

Film work

His film work included

Byzantium

(2012) directed by Neil Jordan and

The Count of Monte Cristo

(2002) directed by Kevin Reynolds. Proud of finally making it to the stage of the Abbey in 1997, when fluency in Irish was no longer required, he played in Conall Morrison’s adaptation of Patrick Kavanagh’s

Tarry Flynn

. He also appeared in

The Burial at Thebes

, Seamus Heaney’s adaptation of Sophocles’

Antigone

at the Peacock in 2008.

He played in the highly-successful jury drama Twelve Angry Men which opened at the Andrew's Lane Theatre in Dublin.

Other figures with whom he was professionally associated during his 70-year career included John Cowley, Donal Farmer, David Kelly, Hugh Leonard, Tomás MacAnna, Patrick Magee, Anew McMaster, Anna Manahan, Ronnie Masterson, Eugene McCabe, Siobhán McKenna, Ria Mooney, Liam Neeson, Jim Norton, Noel Pearson, Norman Rodway, Alan Simpson, Carolyn Swift, Alan Stanford, Maureen Toal, Niall Tóibín and Ronnie Walsh.

Son of a first World War veteran who spent most of his life working for the Post Office, John Finbar Cassin was born in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, in 1924. His autobiography, I Never Had A Proper Job: A Life in the Theatre, was published by Liberties Press in 2012. It is a highly-readable account of life in the theatre: the ups and downs, emotional rewards and financial insecurity. In May 1961 he married Nancy McCullen, who farmed in a townland called Salmon, in Balbriggan, Co Dublin. When city-dwellers queried the notion of a woman farmer, Cassin replied: "She drives tractors. She reaps. She sows. She de-horns cattle. She docks lamb's tails. She midwifes ewes during the lambing season." Nancy died in 1999 aged 72 years.

Barry Cassin is survived by his five children, RTÉ presenter Anne Cassin, James, Philip, Andrew and Lilian, and 16 grandchildren.