The first St. Fintan’s School Musical was staged in 2007 with the premiere production in Ireland of Tommy, the stage version of the rock opera album by The Who. It has been a successful annual Transition Year event ever since, staged with students from the TY program in Santa Sabina performing the necessary female parts.

It has grown from being an initially experimental move to see if the Performing Arts in the school could expand, develop from three prior staged dramatic pieces, in order to allow more involvement from the student population – personnel and contributions – and to allow a greater entertainment of singing, dancing, acting, and even puppeteering (Avenue Q), be displayed by the young and talented casts, for the audience.

As the years have gone by, we have always tried to develop and expand on the staging and production from prior years. The addition of scaffolding for the set construction, a rewiring of the electrics to sustain the necessary light and sound rigs, a new curtain and pelmet was acquired recently, tiered seating for the performances was introduced, as well as the traditional ‘Cast & Crew’ hoodies, worn with great pride as a badge of honour by all participants, including the staff involved, and this year’s show sees the return of a live band after a couple of years’ absence.

​Alumni of the shows have included Bohemian and Longford Town footballer Paddy Kirk (Sweeney Todd), three Senior All-Ireland Football winners in Brian Fenton (who played Marius in our Les Miserables), Brian Howard and Laura McGinley (both of whom were in Sweeney Todd), as well as former Miss Ireland Holly Carpenter (Back To The 80s!), and Danny Michaels, who subsequently swapped his Dentist’s Surgery (from Little Shop Of Horrors) for the land of Oz, and starred in Wicked in London.