There are still plenty of seats available for many of the productions in the Dublin Theatre Festival. This was attributed to uncertainty last week in the wake of the attacks in the US. However, bookings have now picked up
"An awful lot of seniority" is how Eircom Dublin Theatre Festival director Fergus Linehan described this year's festival, which opened last night with the award-winning Israeli production, Oyster, at the Olympia.
The presence of veteran theatre director Peter Brook, directing in Dublin for the first time, accounts for some of that seniority. Le Costume opens in the Tivoli Theatre tomorrow night, and at noon tomorrow he gives a public interview to Fintan O'Toole in Liberty Hall.
He arrived in Dublin on Saturday, and has been intensely involved with the festival since, according to Mr Linehan. "He's been in the studio all morning with a group of young Irish directors," he said. Among them was Conall Morrison, who directs the first of the Tom Murphy season at the Abbey, A Whistle in the Dark, which opens tonight.
"He saw the Murphy plays," Mr Linehan added.
Another international success visiting the festival is Woyzeck, a musical version of the Bruchner story, directed by Robert Wilson with music by Tom Waits. It opens in the Gaiety tomorrow.
However, the seniority referred to by Mr Linehan is not confined to international shows. The Abbey's Tom Murphy season, along with a new one-act play by Brian Friel at the Gate (the other two short plays are by Conor McPherson and Neil Jordan - the first stage play written by the latter), bring two of Ireland's foremost playwrights, both with their own formidable international reputations, into the heart of the festival.
Mr Linehan is excited, but not complacent. "It makes you realise all the people you're not presenting, all the things that never got here. We never had Mahabharata, for instance.
"What we've done this year is match Murphy and Friel. It's really important that Irish artists are exposed to this."
The festival organisers had a bad week following the attacks on the US when there were no bookings and people were, obviously, distracted by the aftermath of the attacks.
Bookings picked up again last week, and one or two of the shows are now booked out. Mr Linehan said that because of the lost week there will be some availability at the doors this year.