It seems that Jimmy O'Dea, who will take the part of "Bottom" in the "Midsummer Night's Dream" at the Gaiety this coming season, is merely returning to his first love.
I find that the B.B.C. "boosted" him, during a recent broadcast from London of a "Melody and Co" series, as "he began in very serious drama. He used to play in Ibsen and Chekhov in the Irish Theatre in Hardwicke street, Dublin, and he played in Shaw at the Abbey Theatre soon after the last war."
I particularly remember Jimmy starring in one long play at the Olympia. This was "Good Night, Mr O'Donnell," and it was a comedy based on the sensational and never-explained disappearance of the Irish Crown Jewels from Dublin Castle at the start of the century.
The author of "Good Night, Mr O'Donnell" is now his Excellency Robert Brennan, Irish Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States! It might not be a bad idea at that, to give Jimmy O'Dea some official appointment as his country's best humoured and most popular propagandist, North and South of the border.
The Irish Times, September 5th, 1940.
