A PLAY rejected by the Dublin Theatre Festival and by the Festival Fringe was honoured last night by a visit by the President, Mrs Robinson, at a benefit performance in aid of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, writes Paddy Woodworth.
Daddy's Little Girls, a play which claims to "break the last taboo" on child sexual abuse, had been rejected on artistic grounds, according to the festival and fringe organisers.
But Mr Brian O'Duffy, artistic director of the Irish Theatre Workshop, which produced the play, believes that it was rejected because the way the theme was handled was too shocking for the festival's taste.
Last night, a packed house in Anthony's Theatre, Merchant's Quay, clearly found the show powerfully moving. Ms Olive Braiden, director of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said that the pseudonymous playwright, Immanuel de Ryker, "tried to deal with the subject as sensitively as he could. The play told it as it happens, according to the stories we would see in our clinics."