THE opening night of Brendan Behan's The Hostage in the Abbey was one of the most lively, best humoured first nights in a long while, with many of the Behan family in attendance. Blanaid was back from Oxford for the night, where she works as a television producer, as was her actor brother Paudge.
Trying to get a good photograph of the very handsome, very blond son of Beatrice Behan should have been easy, but Paudge insisted on acting drunk as Peter Sheridan was in the crowd, and "I just want him to know that I can play Brendan in the movie".
Peter was happy and optimistic despite Sean Penn's eleventh hour withdrawal from his movie The Bells of Hell causing the production to grind to a halt. "The film will happen. I've spent four years working on it and it was in pre production for a year, so it has built so much momentum that it simply has to happen," he said. "What we have to do now is get a new package together."
Far from spending last week in the throes of disappointed misery he set to work finishing a play that's been in his mind for a while. "It's called Philo and it's fairly unusual in that all the actors will have to be over 70." Let's hope that when it is eventually staged, actors dropping out will be the least of his worries.
Also there was young actress Neili Conroy, whose father Brendan Conroy is in The Hostage. Anyone who remembers her stunning performance in Family, Roddy Doyle's TV series, will be keen to see her in her latest project, the film version of The Van which will be released later this year.
Seamus Behan, Brendan's younger brother, travelled from London for the first night and proclaimed himself the luckiest of the Behan brothers. "I'm the only one of them who never wrote an effin' book."
