On The Town:Opening night at Dublin's Peacock Theatre for the world premiere of a new Sam Shepard play, Kicking a Dead Horse, with Stephen Rea in its central role, was a once-in-a-lifetime occasion for many.
"Braitheas an-bhrodúil go raibh Sam Shepard agus Stephen Rea ar stáitse na Mainistreach," said Fiach MacConghail, director of the National Theatre, describing how proud he felt to see the play's two stars united on the national stage. He brought the two men together in New York last October to suggest they do a play together. They agreed, and four weeks later Shepard's script arrived, he recalled.
"Thraenáil Stephen in Amharclann na Mainistreach - tá sé tagtha abhaile," he said, remembering that Rea trained in the Abbey 26 years ago and that the opening on Thursday was like a homecoming.
"It seemed like the stage was full of people," said the Pulitzer-prizewinning writer, Richard Ford, who attended the opening with his wife, Kristina. "It was full up with emotion, language, movement," he said.
"It had all the ingredients that connect with me in a piece of theatre: it was hilariously funny and full of despair . . . He's the Beckett of the prairies," said actor Olwen Fouéré of Shepard, who also directed the play.
"The settlers were just as much haunted by the ghosts of those they vanquished as were the Indians, and the play is about that," suggested Prof Luke Gibbons, of Notre Dame University in Indiana, who was there with his wife, Dolores.
Among the playwrights who attended were Conor McPherson, Billy Roche, Thomas Kilroy, Sebastian Barry, Tom Murphy, Bernard Farrell and Michael West.
Kicking a Dead Horse, by Sam Shepard, runs at the Peacock Theatre until Sat, Apr 14
Hung up on secret stories
Paintings with secret stories to tell were unveiled by President McAleese at a new exhibition in the National Gallery of Ireland on Dublin's Merrion Square this week. Treasures from the North: Irish Paintings from the Ulster Museum, comprising 60 paintings dating from 1692 onwards, includes works by Paul Henry, Jack B Yeats, Louis le Brocquy and Gerard Dillon.
A painting from 1852 by James Glen Wilson, Emigrant Ship Leaving Belfast, "is my particular favourite", said Dr Eileen Black, who selected the pictures along with her fellow curator of fine art at the Ulster Museum, Anne Stewart. "I researched him over the years. There was nothing about him when I started in the Ulster Museum in 1973. We had two paintings of his. We get completely involved with our pictures. They do become like family."
Three paintings in the show by Enniskillen native William Scott provide "a wonderful sense of his journey towards abstraction", said Anne Stewart.
Laillí de Buitléar, daughter of artist Charles Lamb, attended the opening with her husband, film-maker Éamon de Buitléar. She recalled her father doing the portrait of A Lough Neagh Fisherman in 1920. The fisherman's name was Briany, she remembered.
"Is breá liom é. Tá ceann den fear céanna agam sa bhaile, ach tá an ceann seo fíor uasal," she said, noting the more noble aspect of the sitter in the museum's painting compared to a similar one she has at home.
Arts consultant Ciarán MacGonigal was looking forward to viewing a painting by his father, Maurice MacGonigal, of the interior of Dublin's Olympia Theatre "with really identifiable people in it".
Fionnuala Croke, head of exhibitions at the National Gallery, said her favourite piece was a painting by Strickland Lowry of The Family of Thomas Bateson, in Orangefield, Co Down, in 1762. "It's just a lovely period piece, it's a beautiful family portrait, and the five children look so solemn, so serious," she said.
Treasures from the North: Irish Paintings from the Ulster Museum continues in the Millennium Wing of the National Gallery until Sun, Sept 16. Admission is free
Back to basics with Schiller
There was a standing ovation when Rough Magic's opening night of the German classic, Don Carlos, ended this week. The 18th-century play by Friedrich Schiller, in a new version by Mike Poulton, who attended the opening performance at Project Arts Centre in Dublin, has never been seen in Ireland before.
"Ní chaillfinn soicind de," said an enthralled poet, Gabriel Rosenstock, at the end of the show, stating that he would not want to lose a second of the play's performance.
"If there's any message that will ring out in Don Carlos, it is that tragedy will always follow the loss of self," he said. "It brings you back to the basics of classic drama and the whole range of human emotion and social machinations and deceptions and self-deceptions." He added that although Schiller and Goethe are the two biggest literary names in Germany, the wonder is that "they are so seldom performed outside of Germany".
"I know Schiller was a huge influence on Coleridge, which is where I first came across him," said writer and poet Theo Dorgan. The play, he said, is about "the war between duty and freedom. Schiller was the first in modern Europe to pose the problem . . . It's high time we were broken out of the anglophone prison [the dominance of plays from the English-speaking world]".
Photographer Amelia Stein and artist Mick O'Dea, whose show, Ceremony, opened at Dublin's Kevin Kavanagh Gallery this week, were both at the opening night.
"I loved the dark intrigue of it and how directly it speaks politically to our own time," said Loughlin Deegan, director of Dublin Theatre Festival and former executive producer of Rough Magic (it was the first day on the job for Deegan's successor at Rough Magic, Diego Fasciati).
Also at the show were former minister for justice Nora Owen and her sister, former MEP Mary Banotti. Banotti will take part in one of a series of talks at Project about Schiller's masterpiece, discussing "the death of idealism" with Ivana Bacik on Thursday, March 22nd, at 6pm.
Schiller's Don Carlos, in a new version by Mike Poulton, continues at Project until Sat, Mar 31
Pinning down the Gate's elusive spirit
Michael Colgan, director of the Gate Theatre, was honoured by the French government when he was presented with a Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters medal at a special ceremony in Dublin this week.
"You are absolutely eluding definition," said the French ambassador, Frédéric Grasset, before pinning the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal on Colgan's collar at the French Residence. "Perhaps the only way to define you is to look at the stage where you are not. He is not on the stage, he is in the wings. He is the spirit of the place, the hidden particle on which everything is built . . . You are the medium through which Beckett was seen, played and understood as who he is."
"He has persistence, wit and a great sense of humour," said actor Ralph Fiennes, who attended the reception. Fiennes had just finished working with writer Martin McDonagh in Belgium, along with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, on a film called In Bruges. Last year, the actor starred in the Gate's sell-out production of Faith Healer, by Brian Friel, who was also at the award-giving ceremony with his wife, Anne.
Also present were actors Ingrid Craigie, John Kavanagh, Stephen Brennan and Alison Doody, director-general of RTÉ Cathal Goan and producer Alan Moloney, who filmed and co-produced with Colgan each of Beckett's plays in 2002.
"He's a great person to have in your corner," said actor Barry McGovern, who listed "self-assurance, loyalty, a true friend and fair-minded" as being among Colgan's distinctive traits.
"I think his love of Beckett is absolutely genuine, and he's stayed with it," said Eithne Healy, the former chairwoman of the Abbey Theatre. "It [Beckett's work] is not easy, but he's made it easy for the rest of us."
"He is the great persuader, he never stops," said David Blake Knox, producer and director of the upcoming Arts Lives documentary, Waiting for Colgan, which will be screened on RTÉ1 on Tuesday, March 27th.
It was "like a whirlwind" the day Colgan arrived at the Gate Theatre as its new director 24 years ago, recalled Gate deputy director Marie Rooney.
"He's delighted that he's got this award," she said, adding mischievously: "He's speaking French all the time."