Boston will be a quieter, duller town now that it has lost the indomitable presence of Mary Manning Howe Adams, known to all as Molly. She died of kidney failure on June 27th, at Mt Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was 93.
Dublin-born and raised, Mary Manning had been associated both with the Abbey Theatre, where she had been a pupil in Sara Allgood's acting class, and as a writer for the Gate Theatre in the era of MacLiammoir and Edwards.
Ms Manning was a prolific playwright and novelist, and adapted the novel, Guests of the Nation, for a film directed by Denis Johnston. One of her earliest plays, Youth's The Season, was produced at the Gate Theatre by Hilton Edwards, with settings by Micheal MacLiammoir, and was an instant success. She was also the author of Storm over Wicklow, and Happy Family. The Voices of Shem, her dramatisation of a part of Finnegan's Wake, was performed in Cambridge by the Poets' Theatre, and in Dublin, London and Paris by the Irish Players.
She wrote three novels, Mount Venus, Lovely People and The Last Chronicles of Ballyfungus. Her play, Go, Lovely Rose, first produced by the Poets' Theatre at the Kennedy Library in Boston, was given top billing at the International Women's Playwriting Festival in Galway in 1997.
In 1935, Molly came to Boston, and married Mark DeWolf Howe, a Harvard Law School professor, a proper Boston Brahmin who was as shy and retiring as Molly was warm and gregarious. She was one of the founders of the Poets' Theatre in Cambridge, which brought some of the country's most distinguished poets and poet dramatists to its stage. She was the Theatre's guiding light and a long-time contributor to many of its productions, as well as serving on its board of directors up until the time of her death.
Molly's description of the Poets' Theatre board of directors carrying a drunken Dylan Thomas to his first American reading before a packed house at Harvard's Sanders Theatre ranks as one of the great anecdotes in Boston theatre history. Like so many Poets' Theatre productions, mayhem and chaos reigned backstage, but Thomas rallied on stage and gave a triumphant reading to an assembled literati.
Ireland and the Irish theatre were the two of the great loves of her life. She remained a staunch supporter and mentor for young Irish writers, actors, poets, and novelists, and bridged the gap between American and Irish theatre and literary life. Molly's daughters, Fanny, Susan and Helen, now distinguished academics, writers and artists, vividly recall being serenaded in their living room in the late l950s by a charming group of Irish musicians. Like many of Molly's houseguests, the Clancy Brothers went on to distinguish themselves in larger arenas.
When Mark Howe died, Molly returned to live in Dublin in 1967, and remained there for ten years, writing often for Hibernia, The Irish Times and other publications. An avid gardener and a gregarious hostess, her home in Monkstown was the gathering place for many of her Irish friends and family. She often said that those ten years back in Dublin were among the happiest of her life.
A part of Dublin remained with her all her always even as she became a doyenne of Cambridge cultural and academic life. But she was essentially the creation of her own imagination, and stories of her life were often suited to that imagination. The parties in her apartment overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge were the settings for some of her finest hours on stage.
Molly had an acerbic wit and a quick silver mind, and no one was safe from her darts and arrows. She delighted in the company of her large family and her many friends here in the Boston area, and just two weeks before her death she hosted one of her famous Sunday night soirees in the reception room of her retirement home. There was music and laughter, talk and gaiety, good food and good wine, and in the midst of it all was Molly, holding forth. It will be good to remember her this way, but I shall miss my phone ringing in the mornings and Molly's voice, still with faint traces of her Irish accent, saying: "Hello, darling. How's your love life?"