On the Town: Gridlock. Hundreds of cars and at least 2,000 people in and around the Corrib's Salmon Weir bridge. Publicity for Druid's new production of The Playboy of the Western World had been good. But that good?
Much as Galway Town Hall Theatre's manager, Michael Diskin, might have liked to pack them all in, most of the throng was pressed in and around the Taj Micheál - Galway Cathedral - close by where the Novena was taking place.
The audience for Druid's opening night had been well warned about the potential scramble for parking - the city authority's car clampers being the new form of "bailiff" so scorned in Synge's western landscape.
And quite a few of those invited had come from compass points east to view Garry Hynes's latest adventure, including Cathal Goan, RTÉ director-general and formerly of TG4, and his wife, the sean-nós singer Mairead Ní Dhomhnaill; and Prof Thos Bartlett, associate professor of modern Irish history at University College, Dublin, and his wife, Rebecca, artistic director of Bards in the Yard and well known for her involvement in youth theatre.
Dublin scriptwriter Mark O'Rowe - author of the film Intermission in which Cillian Murphy starred - had also travelled west to watch the Cork actor's interpretation of Christy Mahon.
However, it was very much a Galway night, with the city's first citizen, Mayor Terry O'Flaherty, in the company of several former mayors, including Fine Gael councillor Angela Lupton; Fianna Fáil senator Margaret Cox and Labour Alderman Catherine Connolly; Sabina Higgins, wife of Michael D; and the apolitical Dr Iognaid O Muircheartaigh, president of NUI, Galway.
The Druid Theatre Company's chairman, Seamus O'Grady, recalled the last time that the company had staged The Playboy, when Marie Mullen gave a memorable performance as the Widow Quinn. Mullen was in the audience to watch Aisling O'Sullivan's own construction, as were other members of the company's wider family, including former chair and Druid sponsor, Donagh O'Donoghue, and Garry Hynes's parents, Carmel and Oliver, and brother, Jerome, who is chief executive of the Wexford Opera Festival.
Fergal McGrath, Druid's managing director, is delighted with the bookings - the play has already sold out in Galway - while Val Balance, director of Áras Éanna, Inis Oirr's arts centre, could report that there is heavy interest in the forthcoming performance on Inis Mór.
The production is also set to travel to Inis Oirr and Inis Meain, after it has been to the play's "homeland", Synge's setting of Gaoth Saile, north Mayo.
The big challenge, McGrath acknowledges, will be transferring a slightly modified version of Michael James Flaherty's shebeen to community halls in these locations. "We already have seven large wheelie bins organised for the Aran ferry."
