{"id":167580,"date":"2025-11-30T12:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T12:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/167580\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T12:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T12:50:09","slug":"meet-the-95-year-old-wicklow-man-who-brought-melodrama-to-rural-ireland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/167580\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the 95-year-old Wicklow man who brought melodrama to rural Ireland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">One of the Show People who travel the roads of Ireland bringing joy to people\u2019s lives, Kilmacanogue\u2019s Harry McFadden has tales to tell of his life on tour <\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Harry McFadden in his living room in Kilmacanogue. Photo: Leigh Anderson\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WP 22A48.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Harry McFadden in his living room in Kilmacanogue. Photo: Leigh Anderson<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">At one point in our conversation, Harry begins quoting from the script of East Lynne, the famous melodrama which used to be popular throughout the English-speaking world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cDead! And never called me mother!\u201d he declaims cheerfully, recalling how audiences used to love the play when it was staged by the McFadden road show in towns around Ireland. He has not presented the old crowd pleaser, with its sentimental plot featuring the death of the luckless Little Willie, in more than half a century. Yet the words are delivered as clearly as they ever were by his female co-stars at venues such as The Murrough in Wicklow or the old coal yard in Bray.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the Show People who travel the roads of Ireland bringing joy to people\u2019s lives, Kilmacanogue\u2019s Harry&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24533,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-167580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-david-medcalf","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}