Brian Brady arrives at least two minutes late, very apologetic. "I know I should never keep a lady waiting." Perhaps it is his current immersion in The Marriage Of Figaro that prompts such chivalry: rehearsals for Opera Theatre Company's new touring production are in full swing and Brady's head is full of Mozart's soaring melodies. He knows the libretto inside out, having directed a polished production of the Beaumarchais play on which it is based at the Abbey a few years ago.
"I'm very attached to the play, but the score more than compensates for the bits of Beaumarchais that the opera leaves out. In fact, the music tells the story wonderfully - you just have to surrender to it."
Performed in English, using Jeremy Sams's translation for English National Opera, this production has a 20th-century setting. "It has a 1930s feel to it, with hints of the 1990s. Figaro and Susannah could be David Beckham and Posh Spice - let's just say their taste isn't wonderful."
The differences between the play and the opera lie not just in the dilution of the political subversiveness of Beaumarchais's text (which was banned in France in 1784) but in the emotional depth that Mozart gives to the characters. The frothy social comedy of master/servant relations and sexual intrigue is transformed into an exploration of love and betrayal, beautifully captured in the Countess's yearning aria in Act Two (Porgi amor, qualche ristoro) in which she expresses her desolation at her husband's infidelity. "Yes, that aria is central. I have placed the women - Marcellina, Susannah and the Countess - in the foreground," Brady says, "and what emerges is steadfast love and a belief that marriage will survive - the sense that when it's entered in good faith, the act of marriage is a statement of love, which will transcend everything." (Yes, he is married himself). "The Countess's faith in her love is tested. She has had to forgive the Count for the first time, and she does. And there's a sauciness about her too - she is determined to get her man back."
This is Brady's second venture into opera (having been invited by OTC's James Conway to direct Peter Maxwell Davies's The Lighthouse in 1998) and he has definitely succumbed to the bug. Having just launched himself into the world of freelance directing, he is keen to explore new territory. "I'd love to do more opera. I'm in the process of discovering its richness and its layers. I feel that my aesthetics and sensibility suit it: my work is quite poetic and musical." He has used music very effectively in his Abbey and Peacock productions, from Kathleen Ferrier singing Blow The Wind Southerly to Dido's Lament by Purcell.
With a measured, calmly courteous manner and a "conventional", middle-class, Dublin background, he is, he says, very bad at putting himself forward for work; his new London agent does it for him. He's excited about branching out on his own after five years as associate director at the Abbey - which included directing Marina Carr's The Mai, the London production of Dancing At Lughnasa, Synge's Playboy, Chris Lee's The Electrocution Of Children and The Map-Maker's Sorrow, Michael Harding's Amazing Grace, a brittle, zippily stylised version of Sheridan's The Rivals, and a production of Friel's Making History for last year's Friel Festival, which brought impressive clarity and emotional depth to this difficult material.
"I had a brilliant time at the Abbey. When I joined in 1994, there was a real sense among the young staff directors of belonging to the new regime and to Patrick Mason's vision of it. The first two years in particular were fantastic - I was involved in every aspect of the productions, and it was brilliant training, especially in casting." The weeks spent sitting in on auditions have obviously given him insight into actors' potential: he has elicited some memorable performances, including Olwen Fouere playing the Mai in Marina Carr's play, tearing herself apart in her attempt to hold on to her feckless husband; Karen Ardiff as Susannah in The Marriage Of Figaro, Ingrid Craigie in The Electrocution of Children, and his own wife, Catherine Mack, as Mabel in Making History, for which she has been nominated for an ESB/Irish Times Theatre Award. So, is he moving on because Patrick Mason has left? "It's more than that. I have learned an enormous amount from Patrick - he is a master of staging - but I feel that I no longer need a mentor. And also, I don't want to become institutionalised, to be perceived as `an Abbey director', or the power behind the throne."
While Brady clearly is not interested in the politics of the institution, he has been a committed member of a team, enjoying the collaborative nature of his work. "I felt privileged to be part of a big change and to be involved in the formation of a vision of the national theatre. I didn't just see the Abbey as a backdrop for productions that would enhance my own career or ego: I wanted to contribute to the larger project."
His collaboration with new writers has given him immense satisfaction, and he is a cogent advocate of Chris Lee's plays of ideas, with their episodic form, their short, over-lapping scenes linking disparate places and people, their filmic and multi-media influences. "I'm disappointed by the failure of critical response to Lee's plays," he says. "It is as if they were produced in a vacuum.
"Lee is experimenting with form in very interesting ways that reflect the way we live now, the way our brains are changing shape. The plays are full of intense conversations, punctuated with asides - or an ad on TV. They capture sound-bites." Form is probably what interests Brady most in theatre, and he is an admirer of the work of Theatre de Complicite, Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, Sara Kane, and closer to home, John Crowley, whose True Lines shares Chris Lee's fascination with technology, geography and communication.
"Stories are so vastly over-rated," Brady says. "We can watch Coronation Street to satisfy our need for narrative. But what we're looking at in theatre is the human struggle to communicate, to understand."
From his days as an enthusiastic teenage member of Dublin Youth Theatre, through his drama studies degree at the Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity, and his return to DYT as a director, Brady has held on to a sense of the transformative power of theatre, which he feels is becoming endangered. "I believe in theatre as a religious experience. In a post-Christian society it's important that a community of people sit together in the dark, focusing their thoughts and, more importantly, their goodwill, on a happening, a ritual, and encounter their vicarious lives, their dilemmas and emotions, played out for them on stage. It's a collective experience that celebrates humanity - and this is what everyone in the theatre is trying to do. This is my credo."
The Marriage Of Figaro opens at The Rialto Theatre, Derry, on Friday, February 4th, and tours to Dundalk, Mullingar, Enniskillen, Sligo, Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny, Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Clonmel, Armagh and Coleraine. Information from Opera Theatre Company: 01-6708326
