Life
1911-1995; b. Portaferry, Co. Down, youngest of seven; became house painter
after his father from 12; his father was a folk musician; went to work
in Harland and Wolff shipyard; member of St Peter’s Players amateur
group; became author of extremely popular The MacCooeys, a highly popular Ulster
radio series, 1948-54, pioneering vernacular drama; his first piece, Barnum
Was Right (1940) [revived as Right Again, Barnum, for record
run, Opera House 1946 [var. sequel], performed at the Ulster Hall; his
next, Idolatry at Inishargie (1942), and Poor Errand (1943),
performed by Ulster Group Th.; served as General Manager of the Group
Theatre to 1951; Right Again, Barnum enjoyed a record-breaking
run in 1946; plays include The End House (Abbey, 1944), written
in response to Special Powers Act, not staged in Belfast; and Is the
Priest At Home (Group Th. 1954; Abbey, Spring 1956; and revived in
an eightieth anniversary celebration at Lyric Theatre, Belfast, 1991);
appeared in Shiels’s The Passing Day in London, leading to
roles in plays and films; also acted in Tyrone Guthrie’s company and was cast by Guthrie as Fibbs in Shiels’s The Passing Day during Festival of Britain, giving a celebrated performance; appeared
with Gregory Peck in Moby Dick; badly injured in car accident while
playing starring role with Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction (1954)
[var. 1955]; his novels are Red is the Port Light (1948, rep. 1983)
and The Apprentice (1953; rep 1983); MA from QUB for services to
Northern Ireland Theatre; bronze head by Carolyn Mulholland commissioned
1991; d. west Belfast; survived by actress dgs. Frances and Roma, and
wife Lena; funeral service at St Peter’s, Falls Road; bur. St Patrick’s
Ballyphillip, Portaferry; note, the rock musician Sting is m. to one of
Tomelty’s dgs. IF2 DIW DIL MAX OCIL
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Works
Plays, Right Again, Barnum (Belfast: H. R. Carter [1950]);
The Apprentice, the Story of a Nonentity (London: Jonathan Cape
1953), and Do. [rep. edn.] (Belfast: Blackstaff 1983), 264pp.; Mugs
and Money [Barnum was Right] (Belfast: H. R. Carter 1953);
Is the Priest at Home? (Belfast: H. R. Carter 1954); All Souls’
Night (Belfast: H. R. Carter 1955); The End House (Dublin:
James Duffy 1962). Novels, Red is the Port Light (London:
Jonathan Cape 1948), and Do. [rep. edn] (Belfast: Blackstaff Press
1983), another edn. (Belfast: Lagan Press 1997), 210pp.; The Apprentice
(London: Jonathan Cape 1953; rep. Blackstaff Press 1983). Collected
Editions, Damian Smyth ed., Joseph Tomelty, All Soul’s Night
and Other Plays (Belfast: Lagan Press 1993) [contains “All
Soul’s Night”, “The Singing Bird”, “April in
Assagh”, “and The End House”].
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Criticism
Robert Hogan, After the Irish Renaissance (London: Macmillan 1968),
p.273ff.
J. W. Gracey, ‘Introductory Bibliography’, Irish Booklore, Vol. 1. No. 2 (Aug. 1971), pp. 226-34.
J. W. Foster, Themes and Forces in Ulster Fiction (1974) [remarks on The Apprentice and Red is the Port Light].
Damian Smyth, ‘An Introduction to the Plays of Joseph Tomelty’, Honest Ulsterman (Autumn 1994), pp.10-19;.
John Keyes, review of Colin Carnegie production of Mugs (Civic
Arts Th., Belfast, 7-18th Mar. 1995), Mugs [sic. brev.], in Fortnight, Apr. 1995.
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Notes
D. E. S. Maxwell, Modern Irish Drama (Cambridge UP 1984),
remarks on Ulster Group Theatre and Tomelty, ‘a versatile man’;
sardonic temper; ravenous land; 13 plays among which The End House
(1944) [political and economic impositions, and mischance, bring Catholic
family to grief]; Is the Priest at Home? (1954) [priest meditates
on his uneasy role in the peculiar Catholicism of ‘Church Hibernicus’;
includes device of scenes inserted to illustrate priest’s speculations];
All Souls Night (1955) [two sons of fisherfolk die as result of
mother’s greed, and return as ghosts]; Tomelty does not stray from
realism, and is ‘wholly at ease in the manner, in conveying ‘how
things are’ (quoted in Sam Hanna Bell, Theatre in Ulster,
1972, p.85). Bibl, Is the Priest at Home? (Belfast: H. R. Carter
1954); All Souls Night (Belfast: H. R. Carter 1955); The End
House (Dublin: James Duffy 1962).
The Apprentice, Frankie Price, reared by cruel begrudging aunt,
bears marks of early poverty; begins apprenticeship as house-painter,
absurdly grateful for small kindness; his halting progress charted; subtitled ‘The Story of a Non-Entity’; QUOT, ‘Poverty or hard work
can do you damn little harm at fifty or sixty; but get it when you are
seven or eight or twelve, fourteen or sixteen and by God it leaves its
mark. It tears a gap in the soul that you can never heal; it leaves its
echo there, Frankie, and the echo is fear; fear of want, of hunger, of
no work, of sickness. Poverty, son, is cancer of the mind.’ (Blackstaff
Catalogue, 1983).
Red is the Port Light, intro. Benedict Kiely (From Blackstaff Catalogue, 1987), a novel set in Co. Down about relationship between shipwrecked fisherman and the widow who looks down on him.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)