The Stage

Dublin’s cash-strapped Abbey cuts two plays from centenary season

Published Monday 28 June 2004 at 17:25 by Anthony Garvey

Ireland’s national theatre the Abbey has dropped two plays from its centenary celebrations programme, amid reports of financial worries and belt-tightening.

Abbey board chairperson Eithne Healy acknowledged that the productions had been dropped for financial reasons and conceded that the centenary programme may have been over-ambitious. “It would be good to say that we can ‘spend, spend, spend’ but we can’t. We have to watch it,” she said.

However, the Abbey’s managing director Brian Jackson claimed that while finance was a factor in the shelving of the plays, it was not the primary cause. “There were a number of fairly pressing logistical reasons,” he said. “This is a minor change in a large programme.”

The two plays, described in the centenary programme, as part of The Abbey and Ireland series, were to be presented at the Peacock, the national theatre’s second stage. They were Lennox Robinson’s Drama at Inish, a long-time Abbey favourite, which was to run in the autumn, directed by Jim Nolan, and Smokescreen, a new play written and directed by Paul Mercier, which was to open in early December and run into next year.

In the centenary programme, the Mercier play was described as “a challenging work of magic, mystery and mischief for the times we live in”. It is now likely to be staged next year while no new date has been set for the Drama at Inish production.

A government grant of a million euros was provided to help fund the centenary programme and the Abbey raised a similar amount through its own efforts. But its fund-raising committee, chaired by John McColgan, is still some way short of its target figure, “though it has done extremely well,” according to Healy.

She described the centenary programme as “very ambitious” and added: “With hindsight, maybe we should have given ourselves a bit more leeway. Dropping plays is not an easy option but we have to live within our means and maybe we were overly ambitious. Balance is everything.”

Ironically, the financial concerns have surfaced as the Abbey enjoys a box-office boom with a colourful production of The Shaughraun, which has Adrian Dunbar in the lead role and McColgan in his directorial debut at the theatre. The show has been attracting audiences of up to 90% capacity, many of them tourists.

The current run ends on July 31 but already there is speculation that the hard-pressed Abbey may revive the production for Christmas. Meanwhile, compensation for those involved in the deferred productions will add to the budgetary pressures at the theatre.