Taking a long night's journey for a streetcar

Everyone was there, except Hugh Leonard. All the Gate and the good and the nearly famous.

And no Luas talk. The only streetcar referred to was in the play title.

Film-maker Joel Coen, on his third visit to Ireland, was really just interested in raising Guinness and seeing his wife Frances McDormand, as Blanche, play opposite the big Kowalski.

"She's so good," waxed actress Susan Fitzgerald, "she could turn on a sixpence." (Wonder what that is in euros?)

And playwright Bernard Farrell took generous pleasure in Druid's Broadway success.

Actor John Hurt, who has just finished work on Nightrain, a film made in Dublin, was not too happy when it was suggested he tends to be cast as the villain, as in Rob Roy, which was on TV on Monday night.

"I try to avoid that," he said.

Jean Butler of Riverdance was curl-less and unrecognised, until people realised that beneath all that straight hair was the same sweet lady. Maybe her hair just relaxed when Michael Flatley left the show.

And there was Marianne (Faithful) and Deirdre (O'Callaghan) and Mary (Finan) and Eithne (Healy) and Gloria (Farrell) and Kate (Thompson) and the Queen of the Gate, Marie Rooney, overseeing all as though she had just been reading the Little Book of Calm.

Enter Michael Colgan wearing a greeting, trailing two visitors from Melbourne. And the ever-friendly front-of-house manager Bernard Ward, who advised deafness when the first curtain-up bell went at 7.45 p.m.

We did as bid, as though to the army drawn.

Two other bells followed before the play began at eight. Actor Stephen Rea, who has just finished filming on Still Crazy, about a 70s rock band resurrected for the 90s, feels the Belfast Agreement is "an important step forward," while film director John Boorman feels it is important that people like his movie The General more than he does himself.

Which he does. It opens in Dublin on May 29th.

There also was David Herlihy, who played a lead role in the Gate's last production, A Long Day's Journey Into Night, U2 manager Paul McGuinness, actors Barry McGovern and Alan Stanford, theatre director Ben Barnes, Dublin Chamber of Commerce's Noel Carroll, and the British Ambassador, Mrs Veronica Sutherland.

Everyone, except Mr Leonard. Which is a pity as there'll never be another Hugh.