IT was a high octane night when Tarry Flynn opened at the Abbey Theatre on Wednesday night and the audience was almost as fall of energy as the cast. All the usual Abbey suspects were there director Ben Barnes who is at work on the next Abbey opening, Juno And The Paycock;
Tom Hickey being very mysterious about his next move but mentioning the magic word Lughnasa; and Bernard Farrell who is hard at work on a new play.
Dread-locked British poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who arrived with the British Council's Harold Fish, added a touch of interest to the first-night crowd. Zephaniah is in town for the unusual task of performing, for children and criminals he was in the Writers' Centre on Friday for "a children's Books Ireland summer" school, and will also be doing a workshop in Mountjoy Prison. He joked that he had spent enough time under a prison roof, both as a performer and as a "guest" to feel quite relaxed in Mountjoy.
The film industry was out in force with all manner of writers, directors and actors superstitiously not talking about upcoming projects. Both Brian Cox and Peter Sheridan came along having spent the day in George's Pocket, near the Mater hospital, on the set of Jim Sheridan's The Boxer. Actor Karl Hayden was drinking pints with Paul Meade who is currently filming a Short Cuts film, Citando, which is directed by Declan Recks, while screenwriter Richard Dormer, who is developing a couple of projects with David Collins for Samson films, chatted with director Stephen Bradley.
Bradley's girlfriend, actor and comedian Deirdre O'Kane, was just one of a strong Cat Laughs Festival showing that also included comedian Michelle Read, director Richard Cook and his fiancee, actress Pauline McLynn. O'Kane, who was one of the winners of the recent Carrolls New Comedy Awards, will shortly be putting on her other hat to appear as Mary Boyle in Barnes's Juno.
Choreographer David Bolger was taking a rare break after the show. What with teaching the Tarry Flynn cast to behave like chickens, bullocks and hedges, as well as starting work on a new piece with dance company Coisceim, the man's fair worn out. The new work, entitled Back In Town, is set to the music of Phil Lynott and Bolger was anticipating dreadful trouble getting the brights to Lynott's work.
However, when he "rather cheekily" rang Lynott's mother, Philomena Lynott, she declared that a dance piece to her son's work was a "dream come true" and matters with Polygram suddenly became much easier. The show, which includes Muirne Bloomer and Justine Doswell - who are also in Tarry Flynn is due to go ahead in Trinity's Samuel Beckett Centre in the second week in June as part of the upcoming Dance Fest.
Other people enjoying the show and drinks afterwards were Tom Murphy and Rosaleen Linehan, fresh back from the run of Murphy's Bailegangaire in London's Royal Court Theatre; singer and actress Maria Kennedy Doyle and husband singer Kieran Kennedy; artist Dorothy Cross; poets Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Micheal O'Siadhail; director Lynne Parkers and actor Paul Hickey; brothers director Michael Scott and singer and choreographer John Scott; and father and son actors Des and Stephen Neelin.