OnTheTown - Rachel Dugan and Lorna SigginsThink "first-night nerves" and you think "actors" - but what about the audience? It is a curious trait, this tendency to laugh one's way through the first 20 minutes of a tragedy . . . and tragedy it clearly was, from the moment that Druid actors Sean McGinley and Aaron Monaghan took to the stage together for the opening night of Empress of India, by Stuart Carolan, in Galway this week.
Monaghan, a Garry Hynes discovery, may have remembered similar outbursts of unbridled mirth six months ago during the first half-hour of Enda Walsh's heartbreaking The Walworth Farce, also staged in the Town Hall Theatre as part of Druid's new writing programme.
Why is it that monosyllabic expletives seem to inspire so many chortles? Gradually, though, as the impact of loss wove its way into the first half of Carolan's work, the audience fell silent. The interval lights elicited warm, if slightly uneasy, applause.
Politicians and Galway Arts Festival (GAF) board members were out in numbers. Former GAF artistic director Rose Parkinson had commissioned Carolan's riveting study of "the terrible abyss of utter loss", as Fintan O'Toole noted in the programme. Parkinson was present herself, fresh from producing the if.com Eddies awards at the Edinburgh Festival.
Don Shipley, artistic director of the Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF), had travelled west before the DTF draws the Carolan play east to the Abbey next month. Many friends of Druid, including Sean and Maire Stafford, of the Taibhdhearc Theatre, were at the first night to congratulate the author and his wife, Emma Kelly, director Garry Hynes and her cast.
Up in the bar, there was much talk of the set, designed by Francis O'Connor. Fergal McGrath, Druid's managing director, described how the backdrop of mirrors was designed by Greek/Swiss team of Evita Galanou, Ueli Nuesch and Thomas Wollenberger. Footage of the moon - " yes, a Galway moon!" - was captured from the window of the Adare Guesthouse, near Fr Burke Parke, where the creative team stays. The guesthouse's proprietors, Padraig and Grainne Conroy were at the theatre to view the footage (and the play), as were Helen James and Mark Geary, parents of two adorable boys, Obi and Luan, who are central to the night's magic.
Marie Mullen, Sean McGinley's partner, had brought their children, Mairead and Roisin, to watch their dad in the lead role, written specially for him. A trimmer McGinley had lost more than a stone during rehearsals.
Empress of India, by Stuart Carolan, runs at the Town Hall Theatre, Galway, until Sept 23 and plays at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, as part of the DTF, from Oct 3 to 14
LS
Saving the Ballaghs from the beverages
A glass of wine is the art voyeur's weapon of choice. It is used to gesture at an interesting brushstroke here, or a sublime tonal change there, straying dangerously close to the canvas on occasion. At the opening of Robert Ballagh's exhibition at the Royal Hibernian Academy Gallagher Gallery this week, however, guests were asked to leave their weapons at the foot of the stairs. Beverages and Ballagh works were kept a floor apart. With pieces on loan from private owners and corporate collections, nobody wanted to risk splashes of unwanted colour on the pictures.
From portraits of Charlie Haughey, Oscar Wilde and Gerry Adams to the many stamps and banknotes he has designed, to a video about the sets he created for Riverdance, the huge range of Ballagh's work was fully represented.
Singer Eleanor McEvoy, academic Declan Kiberd and John Kelly of RTÉ's The View all came along to catch a glimpse of the retrospective. Also there were Marie Rooney and Michael Colgan from the Gate Theatre, where one of Ballagh's sets is currently in use in a production of Samuel Beckett's I'll Go On.
Ballagh, who was joined by his wife, Betty Ballagh, son Bruce Ballagh, daughter-in-law Andrea and gorgeous granddaughter Ava, chose to create a kind of maze through which viewers must weave their way, following the artist's career from the 1970s until the present day. "Somebody once said that doing a retrospective is like drowning," said Ballagh. "Your whole life passes in front of you."
In this particular case, what a way to go.
Robert Ballagh: A Retrospective continues at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, until Oct 22
RD
Glasses raised to glossy's bosses
The sophisticated bartender rattled off the ingredients: vodka, cinnamon, lemon juice, a few other choice spirits, and a perfectly symmetrical slice of apple. These are what make the Glossini, the cocktail specially concocted for the opulent wrap party for the first edition of the Gloss, Ireland's new high-end women's magazine.
"It's sharp, just like the magazine," said Jane McDonnell, the magazine's publisher and former editor of Image magazine, whose equally stylish sister, Sarah McDonnell, is the new publication's editor. But is there room on the news-stands for another glossy women's publication?
"There is room for something a lot more thoughtful," said Jane. "We have created something more adventurous and smarter, to differentiate ourselves from the weekly magazines."
More little black dresses than have possibly ever been seen in one place before crammed into the first floor of Harvey Nichols for this week's party, their glamorous wearers sipping potent Glossinis or pink champagne (or maybe it wasn't pink - the glow from the cerise lighting made it difficult to be sure).
Many of the contributors to the magazine's first edition turned out to celebrate, including writer Antonia Harte, who penned the lead feature. As she flicked her way through the finished product, having her first peek at her own piece, Harte lauded the McDonnell sisters for creating "a magazine for people who like to think about things". Her sentiments were echoed by Liz Barnardo, of Barnardos Furriers, who described the magazine as something new and exciting for the woman who wants to learn.
Many from the world of fashion and design came along to support the Gloss, including designer Lainey Keogh, and writer Robert O'Byrne. Frederique Thoummany, from Chanel, who was thanked by Jane McDonnell for being the first advertiser to move from Image, was also in attendance.
Little black dresses collectively raised their Glossinis to the McDonnell sisters or, as O'Byrne playfully dubbed them, "the Gloss's bosses".
RD