On The Town: There were memories at every corner at the world premiere of The Wiremen, by Shay Healy, in the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, this week. Many at the opening recalled the days when gas and paraffin oil lamps lit kitchens around the country.
"There was great excitement," said Fionnuala Heaney, remembering the arrival of electricity on Inis Turk, Co Mayo - one of the last places to get it - in 1986. "There would have been no romances. The female population was quite small. But the people of Inis Turk formed lifelong friendships with the wiremen who brought electricity."
The Wiremen brought back memories, said Heaney, a primary-school teacher now based in Cleggan, Co Galway. It "recalls the excitement of a group coming into a small area. The men from Castlebar added greatly to the social dimension of the island."
John McColgan, co-producer of the musical with Moya Doherty, remembered his own mother trimming the wicks of oil lamps and cleaning their sooty globes with old newspapers, when his family lived in Ballingale, Co Wexford, in the 1950s.
"I remember being warned not to look directly at the light because it could take the sight out of my eye," he said, adding that "Shay has captured that time in a very honest and evocative way".
Among those at the gala night in the Gaiety were broadcasters Pat Kenny, Gerry Ryan, Gay Byrne, Derek Mooney and Mike Murphy, as well as Ireland football manager Brian Kerr, music mogul Louis Walsh, Fr Brian D'Arcy, Rough Magic director Lynne Parker, Civic Theatre director Bríd Dukes, leader of the Green Party Trevor Sargent TD, singer Paul Brady, and writer James Morrissey with his son, Andrew (13).
The Wiremen, by Shay Healy, runs at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, until Sat, Jun 4