The wind is howling, the night is dark and Oiche Shamhna in Temple Bar is full of strange creatures. Some are draped in sheets with black hair covering their faces. There are banshees all around. A few make it safely into Project on East Essex Street for the opening night of Some Voices by Joe Penhall.
In keeping with the night, Philip Grey arrives in a long black coat. "Are you saying I`m scary?" he asks with a devilish glint in his eye. The former director of FilmBase has just formed his own film production company, Premium Pictures, which is to be based in Mullingar. Watch that space.
The production from Purpleheart Theatre Company, in association with Iomh a Ildanach, of Some Voices will be "savagely funny, violent and compassionate", says the invitation. The villain in the piece, played by Stewart Roche, is the scariest individual of the night but, thankfully, he's killed at the end (he goes down in a thrilling trail of gore) and the play is a great success.
And as the nightlights burn away in the bar, Shane Carr chats to Kate McSweeney about his day in rehearsal for Time Bomb, which opens next Monday. It will soon be another week, another opening. Valerie Bistany, general manager of the Dublin Youth Theatre, says Time Bomb will "be quite polemic, it will divide the audience".