Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, would be pleased. A production of his play, Private View, which opened at Bewley's Cafe Theatre this week, is "maybe the best performance", seen to date by Petr Kolar, the country's ambassador here.
"I have seen it many times," he says. "They lived in that piece," he says of the actors' performances. Having worked with Havel as his personal adviser for a period, he told those gathered for the opening performance that "he is a very modest and decent man and frank . . . His sense of humour and irony was something I appreciated very much. He used it when he was too decent to tell me that I am wrong".
Here to enjoy the play is actor Mark O'Regan, who is just back from a tour of King Lear with the Second Age Theatre Company. Also checking it out is the brother of Mark O'Halloran (who plays Ferdinand), John O'Halloran, in-house barrister at Irish Nationwide Building Society. Gabrielle Kavanagh and her brother, Maurice Kavanagh, who is married to actor Sighle Toibin, have popped in too to see her perform. Others in attendance include writer Jennifer Johnston and her youngest son, Malachi Smyth, and actors Oliver Maguire, Philip Judge and Karl Shiels.