THE Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork is a noble element in the cultural life of the city and has played a vital part in its development for 100 years.
The Palace, as it is known popularly, has had a chequered and sometimes a difficult career.
It is to Cork, says its artistic director, Ms Monica Spenser, what the Theatre Royal was to, Dublin. A theatre of the burlesque, a cinema, and then again a theatre, with the emphasis on drama, it has survived many ups and downs and has come through by dint of sheer doggedness and a will to survive. Last weekend the Palace celebrated its centenary. And there was something to celebrate.
There were great nights there, there was innovation when it wasn't too fashionable to be innovative, and it brought together some of the brightest minds of a generation who went there just to talk in the old Palace bar.
One of the regular participants - was Prof John A. Murphy, now retired from UCC and the author of a fine history of the college. John A., averse neither to a song nor an argument, has recalled those days in this way: "At the Friday night court in the Palace Bar (supplementary sessions sometimes on Monday and Wednesday), Seamus Murphy and Sean Hendrick were respected senior counsel rather than presiding judges.
"Our corner was in the `gallery' section of the bar, raised some steps above the counter area. It soon acquired locally something of a reputation as `a salon'. The regulars in the group were Cork people, of course, but visiting dignitaries who belonged in Seamus's nationwide circle of friends would drop in when in town, as would Cork expatriates like Louis Marcus.
"Curiously, for a period over 20 years ago, the group was far from being male-chauvinist and women like Maighread Murphy and Nancy McCarthy were unlikely to let the men have the monopoly of the talk.
"Sean O Riordain was an occasional visitor, sometimes coming no further than the door when his chest was bad and the atmosphere exceptionally smoky.
"Sean Hendrick and Seamus: Murphy were the grey eminences at the Palace gathering. They had influenced successive Cork artists and intellectuals - not simply because both possessed in high degree a moral integrity, but a flinty independence of intellect which survived all the hazards of, provincial obscurantism.
"In this respect, their stature was at least as great as O'Connor and O Faolain, those celebrated contemporaries of Hendrick, who had escaped at an early date from their native city," Prof Murphy wrote in the centenary programme.
And he reminisced further:
"Murphy and Hendrick were the boys who had stayed at home and they were further admired for that by their younger friends.
"Both of them inspired affection as well as respect, and though Seamus was obviously more affable, an equally warm heart beat under Sean Hendrick's sometimes steely exterior. From the early 1960s conversation ranged widely, and there was chit-chat as well as substance."
The Palace, and that warm circle of friends, declined after that, and while it might have died, it was not allowed to do so. The pulse was weak, certainly, but the Everyman Theatre Company, comprising voluntary enthusiasts - saw to it that the worst possible outcome for a great institution, and for Cork, did not come to, pass.
The Everyman Players kept things going, and now they are on the brink of a new era. On Cork's Mac Curtain Street, a street that badly needs a fillip, the new facade of the Palace, with a delightful, wrought-iron canopy and stained glass by James Scannel, is easily the most eye-catching aspect. Inside, the theatre has been renovated beyond recognition.
The upgrading will cost almost £500,000, and the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht has been an ally in making this possible. After 100 years the Palace is set to regain its rightful place in Cork.
It all began in 1897 when Mr Dan Lowrey opened the theatre on King Street, as it was called at the time.
For its first production of the new century, the Everyman Palace has commissioned the Cork playwright, Mr Johnny Hanrahan, to adapt William Trevor's novel, Reading Turgenev.
This will open on April 28th, and after the Everyman's latest first night who knows what the next 100 years will offer?