Abbey Theatre's First American Performances were at Plymouth Theatre in Boston, September 23, 1911

 

The debut of Ireland's renowned Abbey Theatre took place on September 23, 1911 at the Plymouth Theatre in Boston, with three plays, "The Shadow of the Glen" by J. M. Synge,"Birthright" by T. C. Murray  and "Hyacinth Halvey" by Lady Gregory.

The theatre group was embarking on a six-month North American tour to promote the new Irish National Theatre of William B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and others. 

The Boston Evening Transcript framed the historic occasion this way, "Mr. Yeats, Lady Gregory and the players of the Irish National Theatre will land in Boston for their first visit to America, for their first outside the British Isles, for their first lengthy absence in the season from their own house in Dublin....at the opening of the new Plymouth Theatre, they will act for the first time on this side of thr Atlantic." 

"Yeats, the Irish poet and dramatist, and Lenox Robinson, manager of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and the author of several comedies in the company's repertory, conducted the rehearsal," wrote the Transcript.

In an interview with The Boston Globe, Yeats said, "Ireland has a traditional literature of songs and proverbs, and the speech of western Ireland in particular, is powerful, humorous and sometimes exceedingly beautiful. It is filled with all manner of traditional phrases and metaphors. 

"Out of this folk lore Lady Gregory and the late John Synge have created comedies and tragedies which give the impression of reality, for the speech or their characters is indeed the speech of living people. This speech is not generally considered difficult to understand. The idiom is, to be sure, that of the Gaelic, but the vocabulary itself is practically Elizabethan English. It is, in brief, classical English, the language of people who speak in English, but think In Irish.

"Until we began to write plays in this Irish dialect, it seemed fitted only for cheap comic effects. Our playwrights, however, have proved that it ia a noble speech, full of dignity."

It was also the first productions for the newly opened Plymouth Theatre on Eliot Street (today Stuart Street) off of Tremont Street, the area that is now in Boston's theater district.  A number of other plays were on stage when the Abbey landed in Boston, including "The Bohemian Girl," by Irish playwright Michael William Balfe at the Majestic Theatre, "Houdini the Jailbreaker" at B.F. Keith's Theatre and the "All-Star Vaudeville" review at Loew's Orpheum.

Read more about Yeats' visit to Boston, and check out the W.B. Yeats collection at John J. Burns Library at Boston College.