Madam, - An older generation of Dubliners like myself will remember the Theatre Royal. It was there that I used to see visiting British orchestras in the days when the National Concert Hall, of which I am a "friend", was still the aula maxima of UCD and the RÉ Symphony Orchestra used to play in the Gaiety Theatre.
The loss of the Theatre Royal at the hands of a London company of developers was keenly felt and is still remembered.
Having recently followed in the footsteps of my grandfather J. C. Doyle, who visited Berlin in the 1920s, and having made a point of seeing the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church between the Kurfürstendamm and Budapester Strasse, I heartily agree with the playwright John Arden (January 14th) in deploring the very idea that an Irish company should destroy those two theatres, one that of Max Reinhardt.
In that self-same quarter only some of the ruins of that memorial church survive, a modern church having been built beside it in the 1960s.
Demolishing the theatres would be a barbaric act and generations of Berliners would not forgive us, just as generations of Dubliners do not forgive that company that destroyed our Theatre Royal. - Yours, etc,
OWEN KELLY, Fielbrook Drive, Portlaoise, Co Laois.