On The Town: Brian Friel laughed quietly and modestly as Declan Kiberd likened him to Napoleon: "He's always risking his latest victory to try something different, something new."
Kiberd was launching The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel at the Gate Theatre on behalf of his UCD colleague, Anthony Roche, who edited the collection of essays. Roche said that the book was intended to do justice not only to Friel's most famous work, but also to plays previously neglected because of their initial critical failure.
"You could describe the trajectory of Friel's career like a zigzag pattern," Roche commented. "You could almost describe it as a success-failure pattern, but all the successes and failures are worthy of consideration in their own right, and there are plays that deserve to be rescued. He is our most important playwright, and he continues to grow in significance."
In Roche's words, the new book "looks at how one play speaks to another across the span of Friel's career, and how he always sets out in new directions but also returns to things, answering the success of one play with a satire on the very ideas that brought that play success".
Among the book's contributors at the event were Prof Nicholas Grene, of Trinity College Dublin, and playwright Tom Kilroy. Playwright Frank McGuinness, who also has an essay in the collection and whom Roche thanked especially as a "sounding-board" for the project, sent his regards from London, where his play, The Gates of Gold, is currently in rehearsal. Michael Colgan, the director of the Gate, also sent his apologies from New York, where the theatre's production of Waiting for Godot began a seven- venue tour of the United States earlier this week.
The director of the Abbey Theatre, Fiach MacConghail, was in attendance, having just returned from Princeton University where Garry Hynes is directing a new production of Friel's Translations. Joe Dowling, who directed the first production of Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa at the Abbey in 1990, before taking it on to international success on Broadway, also popped in to give his best wishes to the esteemed playwright.
The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel, edited by Anthony Roche, is publsihed by Cambridge University Press
Doubling up for a double take on the Tiger era
There was a certain site-specific ambience at the low-key premiere of John Boorman's new film, where a small gathering of Dublin's haves and have-nots gathered outside the Savoy on O'Connell Street. The Tiger's Tail takes a look at the inequalities in contemporary Ireland through the contrasting stories of identical twins who are separated at birth. One of them rides the wave of the Celtic Tiger to become a wealthy property developer, the other ends up homeless in Liverpool.
Brendan Gleeson, who stars as both of the identical twins, did not get paid twice for playing the double role, although he admits that the film is almost like "two separate movies about two different guys". Gleeson is looking forward to his next film project, In Bruges, a feature from controversial Oscar-winning playwright Martin McDonagh, which will also star Colin Farrell.
Kim Cattrall, who stars in the movie as the wife of the wealthy twin, came from London to attend the premiere, where she is performing in David Mamet's play, Cryptogram, at Donmar Warehouse. Cattrall said she was delighted to have the chance to be Gleeson's "Maureen O'Hara for a little while". Born in Liverpool, "where there are so many Irish", Cattrall felt an affinity with Ireland when she was filming here, and did a lot of travelling, even taking time out to do a cookery course at Ballymaloe.
The cream of Irish acting talent is also showcased in The Tiger's Tail, and among those attending the premiere were Ciarán Hinds, Cathy Belton, Sean McGinley, who was with his wife, actor Marie Mullen, and John Kavanagh, who was accompanied by his daughter, actor Rachel Kavanagh. Also in attendance was Briain Gleeson, Brendan's son, who, in his screen debut, plays his father's son in the film.
John Boorman was unable to attend due to a sudden bout of flu, but he sent his best wishes for the premiere and for the after-party at Croke Park, where the film's stars mingled with members of the Motor Neurone Disease Association, which was the beneficiary of all funds raised by the evening's entertainment.
Doubt stirs up a lively debate
Did he or didn't he? That was the question on everyone's lips after the premiere of Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opened this week at the Abbey Theatre. The plot, about a nun accusing a priest of sexual abuse, could easily have come across from the High Court in Dublin.
"It's such a hot topic," said Senator David Norris, "I liked it because there is doubt. Even the nun has doubt."
Liveline's Joe Duffy, who said he was lucky to beat the throngs of traffic heading to the Status Quo concert at the Point, wondered if the play might stir up some controversy.
"We got a lot out of the Empress of India play on the show - two days' debate - so it will be interesting to see if this will come up with anything."
Author Maeve Binchy agreed that Doubt was an important play for Ireland. She said she was looking forward to visiting the set of her own film, How About You, starring Vanessa Redgrave, which has just begun filming.
Twenty members of playwright John Patrick Shanley's family from Co Westmeath also attended the performance.
"The Irish bring this play home, they meet it on their own level," said Shanley. It's been eight years since he has been back in Ireland, but the family farm is just the same. "It never changes, but Dublin, my God - I was in a taxi coming here and the traffic jam was like New York."
Shanley, who is in Ireland for a week, has just finished the first draft of a screenplay of Doubt.
"It'll be ready to shoot when I'm ready," he said.
Jim Sheridan, meanwhile, had Mexico, where his current project is based, on his mind.
"It's about a war, set over a hundred years ago," he said.
Afterwards, at a lively bar in the theatre, economist Jim O'Leary bemoaned the fact that the Abbey wasn't closer to his home in Co Meath, "but the trek was well worth it".
Broadcaster John Kelly and actor Michael McElhatton (of Paths to Freedom fame) were also among the crowd. Abbey director Fiach MacConghail said he was delighted with the performance.
"This is an important play for us to do - it's talking to us here, now," he said. Sorcha Hamilton
Gaiety comes to Smock Alley
There was a sense of both ancient history and of history being made this week at the Gaiety School of Acting's 20th anniversary party. At its new home in Smock Alley Theatre in Temple Bar, the school's supporters, benefactors, and past and present students gathered to celebrate both its history and its illustrious future at the historic site of Dublin's first major theatre.
Patrick Sutton, the school's director, commented that Smock Alley's "first and most original use was as a theatre, one of the most famous theatres in Europe, and we're putting it back to where it belongs". Built in 1662, Smock Alley once rivalled London's Drury Lane and many of the most important actors of the 18th century graced its stage, including Thomas Sheridan, Peg Woffington, and David Garrick. Impromptu performances by some of the school's students made sure that contemporary acting talent was not forgotten, and former students Karl Sheils, Rory Nolan, and Gertrude Montgomery (currently starring in The Clinic) were among those applauding them on the night.
When the renovation is complete, Smock Alley will house the school's voluminous activities (including its new three-year degree course, validated by Dublin City University, whose president, Ferdinand von Prondzynzki, was in attendance). It will also be available for rental to theatre companies, and Sutton insists that "the osmosis and the chemistry between the actors training and young companies is critical".
The chairwoman of the Arts Council, Olive Braiden, commended the double-edged purpose of the initiative, commenting that it was "more than a restoration project, but one that resonates for theatre practitioners in Dublin" as it will redress the "relative shortage of high-quality performance and rehearsal spaces in the city".
Joe Dowling, the school's founder and chairman, was on hand to cut the birthday cake, a gingerbread miniature of the building, complete with stained-glass windows. The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was invited to lay the first brick for the theatre's refurbishment and was delighted also to present the inaugural Applause Award to Fred O'Donovan, an ardent supporter of the Gaiety Theatre during the lean times before Dowling's historic directorship - and thus indirectly setting the first stone for the Gaiety School's foundation.
