If Frank McGuinness's Dolly West's Kitchen is, in part, a study of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, then the reviews of the Abbey production in the West End push the study further. The play, set in an isolated Donegal home disrupted by the arrival of two US GIs during the second World War, got very mixed reviews when it premiered during the most recent Dublin Theatre Festival, while in London, some are praising it as an Irish classic.
"Now I believe," says the International Herald Tribune, "we have the first real Irish classic since those long-lost 1920s; Frank McGuinness's Dolly West's Kitchen challenges O'Casey on all of the territory he was the first to mark out . . . " The writer goes on to compare the play with Arthur Miller's All My Sons and adds that Patrick Mason's direction is his "leaving present to the Abbey, one of the best it has had in almost a hundred years".
The Guardian hears in the audience at the end "the collective breaking of 1,000 hearts" and calls the play "a bruiser", "solid and old-fashioned in that great Irish tradition . . . " The Daily Telegraph describes the play as McGuinness's finest, bearing comparison with McPherson's The Weir and Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa and attributes the greatness of Irish playwrighting to "what they are putting in the Guinness in Ireland".
Sadly, joy at the excellence of so many great reviews has to be tempered by shock at the way "Irish" seems to function almost as a brand name in English theatre, and what qualities the brand name is seen to promise. The Independent opines that Justin's closeting as a homosexual "shows how self-deceived the Irish could be" and worst of all is The Mail on Sunday's comment that Pauline Flanagan's Rima is "a tolerant, witty, irreverent Catholic, a rare - not to say, improbable - creature at that time and place."
Runs at the Old Vic until August 5th. Booking: 0044-20-79287616
Red Kettle, the Architectural Association of Ireland and Daghda Dance Company make presentations today in the University of Limerick on how well they have got on as Arts Council pilot schemes with three-year funding agreements.
Multi-annual funding can only be a good thing for most organisations. However, not everyone has been a winner in the pilot scheme process. Rough Magic Theatre Company had its bid for three-year funding turned down. The company, whose production of Stewart Parker's Pentecost is now at the Island: Arts from Ireland festival in Washington DC, has issued a press release saying that "negotiations will soon be under way for a new plan involving an extensive programme of work from 2001 onwards".
The Arts Council's head of public affairs, Nessa O'Mahony responded yesterday, saying: "They are free to come back with another plan, which will be considered."
Meanwhile, despite the commitment of the Arts Plan 1999-2001 to increase openness and co-operation from the council, some organisations are still almost completely in the dark as to why their submissions for a year's funding were turned down. Dingle Writing Courses Ltd had been funded for four years but this year had its grant, which last year stood at £6,000, cut to zero. All the company has been told is that it came down to a decision between themselves and other projects. O'Mahony said that the "change in emphasis of budgets has been a learning process for all of us" and that the communications procedure was possibly "not right yet". "In the case of Dingle Writing Courses, clearly we haven't got it right yet," she added.
The worst part of the Dingle story is that like so many other organisations, they were left waiting six months for a funding decision. During this time, they went £7,000 into debt. The Arts Council's Artform director, Dermot McLaughlin has admitted that the council's its own troubles in recent months contributed to the fact that funding decisions were made "unacceptably late"; this should never be allowed to happen again.
O'Mahony pointed out that the three-year funding process will mean that not every organisation will be bidding for funding at the same time, and this will "rationalise the decision-making process". Delegates at today's conference will be seeking to tease out exactly how, and when.
The Arts Plan in Practice seminar takes place today at the Lecture Theatre of the Concert Hall, University of Limerick, from 9 a.m. to 12.45 p.m. It is intended for representatives of organisations currently funded by the council, and admission is free
