ALL SOULS’ NIGHT
[STAGE-PLAY]
1949 stage play by Joseph Tomelty…
“Truth to tell, All Soul's Night doesn't add up to more than the sum of its parts. In its third act, it
goes in a "Twilight Zone" direction it doesn't quite warrant. And yet, this gives director McGlone a
chance to deliver a perfectly rendered piece of staging.
[The Times, November 2, 1959] “…A Shilling for the Evil Day by Mr. Joseph Tomelty…story of
an old woman’s meanness and her son’s ambition…the atmosphere of All Souls’ Night, where the
dead walk among the living…the shift of focus from life to after life near the end…ghostly
visitation…dour old woman, living from disaster to disaster, saving her money more to
commemorate the dead than to help the living, but with feeling for her dead son illuminating her
for a brief moment…”
Tomelty worked extensively in radio at the Northern Ireland station, creating and writing
umpteen episodes of The McCooeys. As a film actor he appeared in classics such as Odd Man Out
(1949), Moby Dick (1956) and A Night to Remember (1958), as well as low-budget genre epics
like Devil Girl from Mars (1954), The Atomic Man (1955), and The Black Torment (1964).
All Soul’s Night was adapted in 1959 for the television series Armchair Theatre under the title
“A Shilling for the Evil Day.”
[Winnipeg Free Press] “Actor-director John Neville…last season, was appointed artistic director
for Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre… Somewhere in his hectic schedule, Mr. Neville found time to
star in a 90-minute CBS radio version of All Souls’ Night… The play was originally put on by the
Ulster Group Theatre (which Mr. Tomelty helped found) in 1950, and later by Dublin’s Abbey
Theatre; it was also broadcast by the BBC.”
[CHRONOLOGY]
(BBC HOME SERVICE)
[Monday—9:15-10:45 PM]
May 8, 1950 “All Souls’ Night”
PERSONNEL: Mollie Greenhalgh (scriptwriter), James Mageean (producer),
Havelock Nelson (music).
(NORTHERN IRELAND HOME SERVICE, BELFAST)
[Saturday—8:30-10:00 PM]
October 10, 1964 “All Souls Night”
[“…This play is generally regarded as Joseph Tomelty’s finest dramatic
achievement. A tragedy of greed, it evokes with raw sensitivity the
atmosphere of an impoverished Irish fishing village…” The recording of
this broadcast was repeated on Radio 4 on November 15 and 17, 1969.]
PERSONNEL: Ronald Mason (producer).
CAST: Derek Bailey, Elizabeth Begley, J. G. Devlin, Katherine Feenan, Harold
Goldblatt, John McBride, Maurice O’Callaghan.
EXTANT RECORDING
CBC TUESDAY NIGHT (CBC)
[Tuesday—
November 12, 1974 “All Souls’ Night”
[“…The setting for the play is the home of a County Down fishing family
and reveals a social system and a way of life that survive to this day. In
the play the eternal verities are illuminated in a conflict between a penny-
pinching mother and a son who eventually sacrifices his life for a chance
to buy a boat that would make safer and easier…”]
PERSONNEL: Fred Diehl (director).
CAST: John Neville, et al.
SATURDAY NIGHT THEATRE (RADIO 4, BELFAST)
[Saturday—
October 31, 1987 “All Souls Night”
CAST: Michael Duffy, Dan Gordon, Sheilla McGibbon.
[SOURCES]
“Irish Radio Drama.” Winnipeg Free Press (November 9, 1974).
PERIODICALS: Radio Times, The Times [London], Winnipeg Free Press.