Stage which Poddle flows
1 Jun 1961Standing on.a stage under which the Poddle River flows, a cast of 53 past and present members of St. Gabriel’s Boys’ Club, Kimmage, will sing for their holidays for the rest of this week. On the success of their annual show will depend whether _the 120- club members will have a holiday camp by the sea or in the country this year.
Cost of the holiday would be about £120 and it takes a lot of singing to raise that much.
Last year there was no holiday camp because the funds were not available. Title of the show in the only theatre in Dublin with its own private river is appropriately “The Gondoliers”.
Long before the club was formed there 17 years ago by Rev. Father Christopher, C.P.. of nearby Mount Argus, the premises was a flour mill. The old water wheel is still there but the millpond and river have gone underground.
For most of the year the theatre is the club’s gym hall occupying the whole of the ground floor’ of the two storey building.
Basketball
Where once the great millstones ground the wheat into flour, boys play basketball or indoor soccer, box or do physical training —and prepare for life. The club runs an employment bureau—and _boasts that none of its members of working age is idle.
Recently the upstairs section was partitioned off into two games rooms, canteen. drama room, record library, choir room and oratory.
Many more boys want to join the club—but there are not enough voluntary workers.
Run by the Legion of Mary, with, Rev. Father Joseph, C.P of nearby Mount Argus there are eight volunteer youth leaders, all old boys of the club. One of them. Mr. P. Griífin, of Ferns Road, Crumlin. now the Club President, saïd: “I joined the club as a boy of 15, a week or so after it was founded. All of us who are now working as youth leaders feel that in that way we are paying .back some of the great debt we owe. to the club. Four leaders are on dutý each night and the club is open every night except Saturday. At weekends a leader looks after the four football teams entered in the Catholic Youth Council League.
On Sunday nights there ls a teenage social for boys and girls of the Crusaders of the Cross Confraternity. Next September the club hopes to start a musical and dramatic society for boys and girls aged from 16 to 20 and to put on more shows each year. There are also tentative plans for a cycling club.
The club has entered two plays for the Youth Council Drama competition. Ex-Abbey actor Mick O’Connor produces.
Officers
Mrs. May Spinks is musical director of the Gilbert and Sullivan show and leads the club’s boys’ choir all the year round. Mr. A. O’Loughlin, a civil _servant, is producing his eleventh show. Phillips supplied the lighting free. They rank high in the club’s list of benefactors with the local people who donated 15 oil heaters last month. Mick Hayes of the Stadium as P.T. instructor vlce-president ïs Mr. B. Griffin, a brother of the Club President; hon. secretary’, Tony Nolan, Stannaway Road, and treasurer, T. Freeman, Lismore Road. Other’ leaders are C Fenlon, Stannaway Road; D. Hiney. Cashel _Avenue, T. Downes Harold’s Cross and S. Gillican, Lismore Road.
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