The first Managing Director of the National Theatre, Richard Wakely, whose appointment was announced this week, is looking forward to returning to Ireland, with his Punjabi wife and young son. He is currently managing the Hampstead Theatre. He was brought up in Belfast, but had Dublin roots, and grew up on tales of Abbey first nights.

If change is needed at the Abbey, he says, he will implement it "swiftly and sympathetically". He feels the Abbey has great strengths, but is "not playing to them". He wants the theatre to respond to contemporary Ireland, and also to the general theatre scene: "We are" ,he says, "a community of practitioners."