It was a select bunch of friends and colleagues that gathered in Gruel on Dame Street for some yummy food and news of Barabbas's forthcoming festival of three plays. Veronica Coburn chatted about the play she has written, a red-nose version (a "very 'sort of' version", she said) of Moby Dick, called Moby Dan, set in the midlands. Why there, I wondered. Because it's landlocked, she grinned.
Raymond Keane's play, Dog, will be about "the parallels between modern physics and eastern mysticism and quantum theory" - which is a lot of words for a play without words.
Over in the corner, Gerard Stembridge was slagging Enid Whyte about how she used to be a great gossip when she worked for Barabbas, but that now she's gone to the Arts Council she always has to keep schtum. Stembridge's play, Nightmare on Essex Street, will star Coburn and Keane only - "I'm not allowed near the new actors" who are in the other two productions, he joked.
So from November 12th until mid-December, after the theatre and fringe festivals are done and dusted, fans (and there are many) of the innovative theatre company can look forward to a return to its 1994 roots when it first presented a festival of three plays.
D.F.