Episode 32: There's No Business Like Show Business: Irish Performers and Audiences

The newspapers of the day and the diaries of telegraph operator William Manning document an Irish presence on both sides of Cleveland’s footlights in the 19th century. Manning went to the theater almost once a month in the 1860s, sampling melodramas, farces and large-cast spectacles. He took in plays by Dion Boucicault, a versatile Irish-born actor-manager-playwright who was especially celebrated for a series of comic Irish melodramas that showcased his comedic talent while tapping into the growing audience of Irish immigrants in the United States. A Boucicault successor, actor Joseph Murphy, criss-crossed the country with his own roster of Irish melodramas, often stopping in Cleveland. As vaudeville or variety shows gained in popularity in the 1890s, Irish kids in Cleveland dreamed of making it in vaudeville and could see "one of their own," Mitty Devere, at the Majestic Theatre on West 25th Street, or the Empire downtown.