TOM Hickey donned a hard hat on Wednesday night, but was in little danger of a hail of insults from this particular audience as friends of the Abbey gathered to celebrate the publication of the first volume in a New Play Series. Hickey referred jokingly to the recent criticisms of the Abbey, but the biggest laugh came when he recalled playwright Tom Maclntyre's instruction to pitch a line "somewhere between the quotidien and the enigmatic" in rehearsal for Sheeps Milk On The Boil.
Another actor with fond memories of that play was Pat Kinnevane (the latest in the long line of Guinness ad boys) who was just back from Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum where he and Fionnuala Murphy were appearing in Mark Lambert's production of Brian Friel's Translations.
Kinnevane is all set to start work on Lady Windemere's Fan in the Gate (where he'll join Fair City's Claudia Carroll among others) and Murphy is moving on to work with the Fishamble Theatre Company.
Actress Olwen Fouere has recently returned from a spell in London's Cottesloe Theatre with John Crowley's Fair Ladies at a Game of Poem Cards. She is currently hard at work with Michael West on a piece looking at Antonin Artaud's sojourn in Ireland that will be performed in the Project and in a link-up with a theatre in Marseille in the autumn.