The play at the Gate "demands an awful lot from the audience", warns director Michael Caven. Gosh, more pressure. "It's a horribly beautiful play," he says. "They may be wearing pretty frocks but they're not pretty people. They're like animals trapped in a cage. It's like a Jerry Springer show. You can't stop watching. The actors take us on a very dark journey into the human psyche".
Friends link up before Therese Raquin begins. Hugh Maguire, from lovely Killeshandra in Co Cavan, who has recently returned from New Zealand to work as museums officer with the Heritage Council, catches up with friends, including Joe Vanek, set and costumer designer for Therese Raquin, who has an action-packed schedule. Next up for Vanek is to design the set for bash, a trilogy of one-act plays at the Gate with the US film director, Neil LaBute (who directed Nurse Betty and In the Company of Men). And coming up at the end of March in the Gaiety Theatre is the Irish premiere of the new opera of The Silver Tassie, which he's also designed. And in September, he goes to San Jose to work with film-star Holly Hunter on the Marina Carr play, By the Bog of Cats. The man is in demand.
Batik artist Bernadette Madden is here also. Following her trip to Greenland last year, she's now planning an excursion to the North Pole, where she'll take photographs and do sketches to fuel her work back home. She's already knitting the mittens and the leggings for the trip. Poet Siobhan Campbell is here enjoying the play too. Her recent collection of poems, The Cold that Burns, deals with "what we do to sustain ourselves in the face of rampant post-modernism", she says. It is a worry.
Mary and Jimmy Cuthbert from Howth are still in celebratory mood after their daughter's win for costume design earlier this week at The Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards. Her brother, Sean Cuthbert, is home from Madrid to celebrate.