This is series 2 of An Irishwoman’s Diary from The Deirdre O’Shaughnessy Podcast, search in your podcast app for An Irishwoman’s Diary to find the six-episode Series 1.
A precursor of Cabaret, the show about ‘a bad girl with a heart of gold’, became the go-to show in Dublin for a brief period in the 1950s, against all the prevailing morals of the time.
Asked later why it hadn’t been banned, as JP Donleavy’s The Gingerman was, Archbishop John Charles McQuaid pointed out that the character of Sally Bowles wasn’t Irish, and therefore didn’t present a threat to the morality of Irish women.
The star of both shows was Genevieve Lyons, an actor, theatre maker and writer who lived a very unconventional life. Her performance as Sally Bowles caused a brief craze for berets in fashion starved Dublin, and she wrote many books – one, about the famine, owed its name to Princess Margaret.
In this episode Clodagh Finn recounts the story of a self-described “lunatic traveller” who though often penniless followed her creative dreams.
Clodagh Finn: The Irish woman who made ‘Cabaret’ a hit in Ireland long before the Broadway musical
An Irishwoman's Diary series 1: Meet the Irish women who left their mark on history
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