It will come as balm to the theatre-going classes that playwright Conor McPherson is anxious for his Dublin Carol to come to the city whose name it bears. The play has just finished its run at the Royal Court in London, and the emotionally searing portrayal of a man nearly destroyed by alcohol, his estranged daughter and his fresh-faced young assistant, tightened like a vice by Brian Cox, Bronagh Gallagher and Andrew Scott, has been (mostly) uproariously received.
Michael Colgan of the Gate Theatre is exploring bringing the production to the Gate, but the actors' availability makes this difficult. It is possible that the play will run in Dublin in a new production.
"Hopefully, by the next Theatre Festival, it will be here," says McPherson. "I wouldn't want it to go much further than that." Negotiations on a tour to the US are far advanced: "They want to make money out of it," says McPherson. He'll make money out of it too, but he won't be too anxious about that, at this stage. His answer, when asked whether he has made a lot of money out of The Weir, is refreshingly honest: "Yeaahh!". "It means," he says, "I can sit down now and write a play for nobody." He hopes the next play, under the working title, Port Authority, can premiere in Dublin. He'd like it to open in a studio space and then "see where it goes . . . Maybe one of the studio spaces in the new Project - though I've talked to nobody yet." He is writing the play in a "window" before he starts directing a new film, a comedy about actors, with the Dreamworks company. His film, Saltwater, a loose adaptation of his play The Lime-Tree Bower (which will feature in ISDA tomorrow, see right), won a cinema-owners' prize at Cannes and opens in Ireland in September.
Religion and art parted company, to a large degree, in the Western world over the past century. So it comes as a surprise to receive a press release from Dr Bill Murphy, the Catholic Bishop of Kerry, about a show in the Green Glens Arena in Millstreet.
And no, it's not for Riverdance or Michael Jackson. It's for a religious pageant. Dance of Life will present the life of Christ and also, Dr Murphy says: "challenge life as we live it today on issues like poverty and justice and peace". It's ecumenical too, as Dr Murphy shares the patronage with the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ardfert and Aghadoe, Right Rev Edward Darling.
The show will run twice, on November 26th and December 3rd, in this 3,500-seat venue; but mummies, daddies, uncles and aunts will account for a good share of the tickets because there will be 1,000 actors in the show. Schools from Ballyferriter to Millstreet are involved as well as amateur drama groups. The show will be directed by rebel priest, Father Pat Ahern - a rebel, let me quickly add, only in dance terms, for as founder of Tralee's Siamsa Tire, he was among the first to set Irish dancing free from its straitjacket.
Meanwhile, in Cork city, Corcadorca is busy working on The Trial of Jesus, a passion play by Conal Creedon and Pat Kiernan, which will take over the streets of the city on Good Friday. Creedon, better known for his surreal radio soap, Under the Goldie Fish, sternly says that this is not a send-up, and one must believe him, whatever the production pictures of Mike Heffernan, lumbering up Patrick's Hill in a loin cloth with a cross on his back, may suggest.
The capital's main theatre stages will soon be in competition as to which is home to the maddest, baddest woman.
Fiona Shaw always seems to end up playing strong women in trouble, and poor Medea, created by Euripides, is no exception - a mother driven to wield a kitchen knife in her own home, and not to slice the bread.
Medea, to run in June, will be the first play at the Abbey Theatre directed by the acclaimed British director, Deborah Warner, since she became an associate director there.
Among her co-creations with Shaw has been Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, in a version by Frank McGuinness, which sticks in the mind of some Abbey audiences. This will be the first Greek drama on the Abbey stage since 1973.
Meanwhile at the Gate, Steven Berkoff's production of Salome will be brought back to the stage by Alan Stanford, featuring a knife-wielding Fiona O'Shaughnessy, intent on slicing more than salami. A CD of Roger Doyle's original music for the show will be on sale. The production opens on April 11th.
frontrow@irish-times.ie
