THE 37th Dublin Theatre Festival opened last night with a gain performance of Snowshow at the Gaiety Theatre. This surreal tale of man's helplessness before the elements was performed by the Russian clown, Slava Polunin.
"I think many people will miss the magic of the 1996 Dublin Theatre Festival, which I now declare open," said the actor and sennachai, Eamon Kelly, in his address at the opening.
"It is the ordinary people who were ever and always the raw material for theatre in Ireland, but I never saw an ordinary person at the theatre."
He made an impassioned plea that there be some cheap seats' in the city's theatres to allow more people to enjoy theatre. There were very few in last night's select audience who needed cheap seats, however.
It was an audience made up of largely of the glitterati and their children, who squealed with delight at the antics of the Russian clown.
The new chairman of the festival, Mrs Eithne Healy, addressed her speech to, "Taoiseach, Minister, boys and girls."
As well as Mr Bruton, and Mr Higgins, the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, the audience, who played with enormous floating coloured balls at the end of the show, included the former Tanaiste and vice chairman of the Arts Council, Mr John Wilson, independent TD Mr Tony Gregory, and the Fine Gael TD, Mr Alan Shatter.
Guests from the theatre included Rosaleen Linehan, Maureen Potter, Alan Stanford and John Kavanagh. Playwrights Hugh Leonard and Bernard Farrell, and the artists Louis le Brocquy and Anne Madden were there, as were Patricia Quinn and Ciaran Benson, director and chairman, respectively, of the Arts Council.