Madam, - I was delighted to see in today's An Irishman's Diary (August 23rd) that John Arden's The Non-Stop Connolly Show has recently been aired, even if in an abridged form, in Galway city and is also to be performed in Inis Meain. The need to advance the class politics of Connolly is perhaps even greater now than it was when the play was first written in the early 1970s. I was, however, somewhat surprised that Fred Johnston, in his short history of the play, omitted to mention the staging of the play in Galway in May 1975.
The staging of The Non-Stop Connolly Show in Galway was sponsored by the Political Debating Society (PDS) in UCG and the play was performed in the theatre in the Grammar School on College Road. Various problems with the non-arrival of a van-load of props and the sudden unavailability of some actors meant that the play was cut down from the planned 24-hour Non-Stop Connolly Show to the All-Night Connolly Show. That fact that I, as the PDS committee member sent to meet John Arden, did not recognise him from the description given to me and left him standing in a rain-swept UCG quadrangle for 20 minutes added further tension to the production. Despite these minor hiccups the show did go on - running from about 9pm through to 8am the following morning with only a few intervals. The show was not a sell-out but a fairly large audience did attend and, while there was some yawning and twitching, most of the audience were still there at the dawn. - Is mise,
PÁDRAIG MANNION, Woodbrook Glen, Bray.