Not a soup spoon rattled for the duration of the play. Fred and Jane by Sebastian Barry premièred in Bewley's Cafe Theatre this week with Mary McEvoy and Colette Proctor in the title roles, playing nuns.
"It's a fragment of theatre, a little look at life in the second half of the 20th century, about two women who have a great friendship," said Caroline FitzGerald, director of the new play.
Their friendship has "led to problems in the community. In convents, they don't like people having a particular friendship. It's frowned on. You are supposed to have all your energy for God. It's a dream of a play."
Writer Jennifer Johnston took a great deal of pleasure from the play "because of the writing as much as anything", she said. Her own up-coming novel, This is Not a Novel, is due out in October. John Fairleigh, chairman of the Stewart Parker Trust, recalled that Sebastian Barry was the first winner of the Trust's new playwright award, when it was set up 13 years ago. But Barry himself was not there for the opening.
All through the performance, the lunch-time audience remained spellbound.
Barry is "a formidable craftsman" and his play was "very endearing and very poignant," said playwright Aidan Mathews, who was there with his daughter, Lucy Mathews (11). Mathews is currently writing a play called Strands. "It's about violence," he says. "About an atrocity in Ireland during the Civil War and its repercussions through the decades."
Michael James Ford, artistic director of Bewley's Cafe Theatre, explained that Fred and Jane "was originally to be written for an RTÉ series. That never happened and Sebastian gave it to Caroline".
The play runs at lunch-time for five weeks until September 21st.