"All this is icing. I didn't write the plays for this kind of event. The most important thing for me is that someone pays to see one of my plays and then, without any baggage, comes and tells me they liked it," said playwright Martin McDonagh who was a nominee for the Best New Play category with The Lone- some West. "I've had fantastic actors in my plays," said McDonagh (Brian F. O'Byrne went on to win the Best Actor category, and Dawn Bradfield won Best Supporting Actress).
Meanwhile, The Beauty Queen of Leenane previews at the Atlantic in New York next week and opens on February 26th. A new production of The Cripple of Inishmaan is going into rehearsal next Tuesday at the Public Theatre (also in New York). There will be a new all-American cast, with the exception of Ruaidhri Conroy, who plays the lead role.
Artistic director of the Gate theatre, Michael Colgan, was in ebullient form. The Gate was nominated for 11 awards (and won three), so Colgan admitted to feeling "smug". He was also happy to report the Gate's forthcoming American season, featuring Oscar-winning American actress Frances McDormand as Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Busy director Ben Barnes was very positive about the awards ceremony: "Anything that brings such a disparate group together for one night must be good."
Ben directed Jim Nolan's wellreceived new play The Salvage Shop, which Red Kettle is now bringing on tour, and his Juno and the Paycock is returning to the Abbey for another run, after which the new Bernard Farrell play, Kevin's Bed, opens at the Abbey under his direction.
And in the midst of this intense theatrical activity (including auditioning Italian actresses for Kevin's Bed), he is taking time next month to get married to British actress Julia Lane.
Bernard Farrell was delighted that his Stella by Starlight (also directed by the indefatigable Ben Barnes) returns to the Gate next Thursday. He confessed to feeling a bit nervous about the premiere of Kevin's Bed at the Abbey in April: "I'll say I'm quietly confident, which is a euphemism for a wreck."
Patrick Mason, artistic director of the Abbey (and director of the current Abbey production , Tom Murphy's The Wake), is looking forward to taking leave of absence to direct Puccini's Triticco at the English National Opera. Rehearsals start next week. He returns in June to direct Shaw's St Joan at the Abbey. Veronica Coburn of Barrabas also boasted of a full schedule for its production of The Whiteheaded Boy (nominated in three categories) this year, including a tour of Northern Ireland and Wales, a stint at Andrew's Lane Theatre in May, followed by visits to the Edinburgh Festival and the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith later this year.
There are also possible plans to devise a big "poetic, visual" coproduction with the Abbey in 1999.
Actor Brendan Gleeson has been extremely busy, what with a part in the about to be released Butcher Boy directed by Neil Jordan and the lead role in the new film about The General called I Once Had a Life. He is currently filming a new Irish film in Balbriggan entitled Sweety Barrett (in which he plays Sweety) about a "manchild who becomes an unlikely hero". Meanwhile Lynn Parker of Rough Magic is the director of a new production of Sheridan's comedy of manners, School for Scandal, which opens in Galway at the Townhall theatre later this month, and comes to the Gaiety on March 3rd.
Actress Ger Ryan, who will shortly return to the Abbey as Juno, has just finished filming the BBC adaptation of John McGahern's Amongst Women, in which she plays Rose. Her resolution for 1998? "I'm going to stop being so serious. This is going to be my year for having fun!"