Eye - 20 February 2015

From buns at Bewley's to the power of posters

The battle for Bewley’s

Buns and beverages at Bewley’s Café are more than the sum of their parts to the people of Dublin.

The Café was founded in 1927 by Ernest Bewley, a Quaker. In 1972 the company was transferred into a trust company owned by employees. It was acquired by the present owners in 1986.

Victoria White, in The Evening Herald, describes the unique building: ‘There’s not just the six stained-glass windows designed by the famous Harry Clarke… There’s the stunning front of the building, which evokes ancient Egypt in gold leaf, inspired by the mania which followed the discovery of king Tut’s tomb… And, of course, there’s the main room itself, with its high ceilings, its chandeliers and its velvet banquettes.’

Bewley’s has been a haunt for a number of famous figures over time, including James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Samuel Beckett and Sean O’Casey.

Before it became a café, the building housed Whyte’s Academy. Established in 1758, the grammar school was attended by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Moore, Robert Emmet and Arthur Wellesley, the first duke of Wellington.

The future of this historic building is uncertain due to the business making substantial annual losses. In an effort to address this, Bewley’s is closing for six months for refurbishment. When it reopens in September, the Café will only operate on the ground floor and 140 of its staff will have been made redundant.

Damian Cassidy, who founded the Save Bewley’s group in 2004 when the building was last in a precarious position, has re-launched the campaign in response to this announcement. His group wants the Café to be declared a national monument. Damian argues in the Irish Times that ‘we are losing our national treasures simply because there is no power within our planning departments to say “stop”’.

Phan-tastic anniversary

‘A glorious mixture of melodrama, gothic horror, hauntingly beautiful melodies and classical opera pastiche’ has burst onto the stage of Leighton Park School.

The Phantom of the Opera, performed by pupils, ran for four nights in February. Geraint Thomas, head of drama at the school, said: ‘It’s a hugely demanding, monster of a show requiring extraordinary range from the principals [Dan Barber and Ellie Mead].’ In the year when the school is celebrating its 125th anniversary, musical director Rosemary Scales said, ‘we wanted to do something truly magnificent’.

The Phantom of the Opera has brought together over a hundred pupils and involved ‘160 costumes, eighty-two lighting cues, almost forty stage movements and a twenty-seven piece orchestra in the pit’.

Poster power

A snippet was spotted in the i newspaper on 7 February.

Elspeth Wollen, from Swindon Meeting, clocked the listing due to a plethora of coincidences, not only a mention of Quakers: ‘I grew up in Canterbury Meeting and made many a happy visit to the Marlowe Theatre.’ She hit the keyboard when she saw the description of a show appearing at the theatre, in which ‘Josie Long… [fills] us in on having her heart broken, falling in love with the guy on a Quakers poster (the religion, not the cereals) and, ultimately, facing the future with fresh optimism’.

A review of Josie Long’s show, Cara Josephine, by Lee Randall in the Edinburgh Evening News, reports that there’s ‘a great riff which ends with her stalking a Quaker poster boy’.

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