Artscape: As the Winding Stair Bookshop and Café on Dublin's Ormond Quay prepared this week to shut its doors, founder and owner Kevin Connolly had to start a book of condolences because of public demand.
He described the warm atmosphere, with people making pilgrimages to visit the Winding Stair for the last time, "crying, running their hands along the bookshelves". Some who had started coming in when they were young adults were now bringing in their grandchildren. "It's like a state funeral without a body," he said.
The literary oasis, which has fond associations for so many writers and book-lovers, is set to close, probably at the end of next week. Connolly is selling the business , which he started 23 years ago, for personal reasons - over the past nine months he's been commuting from Ohio, where his wife is a pianist and professor of piano. So this is the start of a new life for him.
"There's a season for all things. I've put everything into the manifestation of my dream and have loved every minute of it," Connolly said. He was closing with "mixed emotions", and has been humbled by the reaction.
Interestingly, the name goes with the business, and although Connolly is tight-lipped about who has bought out the lease on the four-storey building, a former textile factory, he says books will still be sold on the premises and that the buyer is not part of a chain.
Obviously, whatever the future for the building, it'll be a new era. Following the demise of Bewley's, that only leaves Grogan's pub as a refuge for those who claim they're writing novels but aren't.
Another Keano comeback
So, the managers have announced the substitutes who are to be plucked from the bench to star in the new run of I, Keano. Those who saw the original might wonder how the show could survive the loss of three key actors, but, in a bid to emulate Riverdance's post-Michael Flatley life, the producers have recast the three roles. Keano will be played by Pat Kinevane, fresh from his excellent comic turn as the manservant in Friel's The Home Place at the Gate. Conor Delaney will play Quinnus (one of the writers, Michael Nugent, siad this week he looks "more like Niall Quinn than Niall Quinn does") and Susannah de Wrixon, seen recently in The Shaughraun at the Abbey, is Quinnus's wife, Surfia. Imaginative casting and fine actors all, and it will be a challenge, to doubt, to step into the boots (or rather, sandals) of the original cast.
Ironies abounded in the public row between the leading figures in the hit musical comedy about the civil uproar that followed the Saipan stand-off between manager Mick McCarthy and star player Roy Keane. The mutiny saw three cast members - Mario Rosenstock (Keano), Risteard Cooper (Quinnus) and Tara Flynn (Surfia) - leave the ship.
The writers of the musical - Arthur Mathews, Michael Nugent and Paul Woodfull - were rather caught in the middle when the row broke, but Nugent said this week that they were very happy with the new casting.
"As problems go, I like problems that result in packed houses and standing ovations," is Nugent's line. "We had a very talented team with different opinions, which led to tension offstage and brilliant performances onstage. We now have an equally talented team, an improved script and strong advance bookings, and I hope that we continue to have equally popular problems in the future."
The writers have made substantial script changes, according to Nugent, and are much happier with the end result.
The original row was partly about artistic direction and production values, but was also about money, with some cast members looking for higher pay. The tensions in the production were great; at the time Risteard Cooper went public about the disquiet, saying that money became a factor, and that what was offered was not enough to encourage him to continue.
"The writers weren't involved in the rehearsal, which seemed to me to be a mistake," Cooper said, adding that some of the script was changed without their knowledge and that "the show was put on without a lot of avenues being explored". He said it was "frustrating that having the comic potential in the cast and writing, the show was limited by the production. It could have been so much better".
The ironies were not lost on stage. One evening Risteard Cooper was on live radio a short time before the show, as other cast members listened in. Later, during the performance, when Dessie Gallagher, as Macartacus, addressed a players' meeting, he sang "One of us has spoken to a scribe . . .", looking straight at Cooper.
For whatever reason, these issues weren't resolved, but in the best tradition, the show will go on, and the rewritten, re-cast version of I, Keano will run at the Olympia from April 27th; in June it goes to Killarney.
No relief from ACNI
There is considerable disappointment within the ranks of Poetry Ireland that its funding application to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) for the year 2005-06 has been turned down, writes Jane Coyle. Director Joe Woods estimates that the organisation, which is "a clearing house for just about everything pertaining to poetry in Ireland", has been receiving financial support from ACNI for "about 20 years of its 27-year life".
Last year, it received almost £12,000 (€17,000) from the Annual Support for Organisations Programme (ASOP). This time around, it applied for increased funding to ACNI's Multi-Annual Programme (MAP), but its application for the maximum amount available - £60,000 over three years - was rejected.
"We are aghast that, after so many years of organising poetry readings in the North and supporting festivals and prestigious bodies such as the Seamus Heaney Centre, we have not been given one penny by the Northern Arts Council", says Woods. "Poetry Ireland is one of the longest-running 32-county organisations in the country and has always lent staunch support to poetry in the North. In the light of reduced financial circumstances and lost time, we will have to look closely at our programming plans for next year."
Timing is, of course, a difficulty for organisations applying for ACNI funding, as the financial year in the North runs from April to April. But Poetry Ireland has been encouraged to apply to a Small Grants Scheme, currently being set up by ACNI, which will use lottery money to make awards of up to £10,000.
Damian Smyth, ACNI's arts development officer with responsibility for literature and language arts, said: "There are several organisations based in the Republic which we fund through our budget. Our exclusive intention is to extract the maximum benefit to Northern Ireland from any monies spent in the Republic. The Tyrone Guthrie Centre is funded (£70,000) and is expected to ensure that Northern artists are given an appropriate share of the bed nights at the centre. Books Ireland (£6,650) and Ireland Literature Exchange (£10,000) are expected to cover NI publications and writers adequately. This they do - and more. Both Clé (the Irish Book Publishers' Association, £6,000) and the Irish Writers' Centre (£8,000) choose to apply to our Small Grants Scheme, rather than ASOP or MAP . . . For Poetry Ireland, making another application may be a burden, but it is hardly a great one."
The deadline for applications for this year's Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in poetry, worth €8,000, is April 11th. The award, made by the trustees of the will of Katherine Kavanagh, is to assist an Irish poet in his/her middle years who has published a substantial body of work and is still publishing. There were three awards made last year, to Kerry Hardie, Michael O'Loughlin and Desmond O'Grady. Further details from the trustees, c/o 3 Selskar Terrace, Ranelagh, Dublin 6. The fellowship will be awarded in the summer.
Four artists have been shortlisted for the 2005 AIB Prize, worth €20,000 to the winner: Orla Barry (IMMA), based in Brussels, who uses video, text, sound and photography in her work; Paul Doran (Sligo Art Gallery), a painter who works in traditional forms such as oil on canvas; Julie Merriman (West Cork Arts Centre), whose medium is drawing and whose current work focuses on buildings about to be demolished; and Tom Molloy (Limerick City Gallery of Art), a painter who draws on mass-media imagery from newspapers and the internet.
The winner will be announced in the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin on April 21st, where a selection of work from the finalists will go on show before also being exhibited at the nominating venue.