JOHN O'HANLON has never played the Mountjoy Prison Playhouse before. He has been too busy robbing banks and doing heroin. He comes from what he calls a dysfunctional family in Kilbarrack. Of the 10 people he grew up with, six are dead from AIDS and three are waiting to die.
If last night's joint production of West Side Story by Pimlico Opera and the Mountjoy inmates ever transfers to the West End or Broadway and they let him out of jail to go with it the sheer energy of his stage presence should mean a bright future in professional theatre.
Naomi Itami, who plays Maria, did The King and I for the BBC last spring opposite Joss Acland. She has appeared at the Canterbury Festival, the Estates Theatre in Prague, and recorded four Lehar operettas with the English Chamber Orchestra. She is half Japanese and half Jewish. Her boyfriend, a banker with Morgan Stanley in the City of London, was in the audience.
Alan Morgan is a brilliant dancer. His last appearance was in The Quare Fellow, also in the Mountjoy Playhouse, which he says "gave me back my self confidence and self esteem which I lost somewhere". He aims to try for a part in Ballykissangel next.
Stephen Chaundy is Tony, the tragic `Polack' lover of the story. He has worked with the English Touring Opera, the English Bach Festival, Opera de Monte Carlo and, on his last visit to Ireland, the Wexford Festival Opera.
Garret Archbold last appeared at Mountjoy in June and the Paycock. He plays Arab, one of the Jets. He is also a poet. A poem by him in the show's programme has a first line reading "Ma said God wouldn't let you into heaven".
John Kelly is one of the Sharks, the only gang from Puerto Rico with Dublin accents. He has worked in five shows with the Mountjoy Drama Group, but this is the first time he has sung and danced before an audience. He does both with style and panache.
Joe Morrison is 32, from Finglas and is serving 10 years for armed robbery. He wishes he had got into theatre earlier. "The feeling you get every time you walk out on stage is indescribable," he says.
He is another poet and has a poem in the programme dedicated to that great friend of prison entertainment, Ms Liz O'Donnell of the PDs, who complained in the Dail that the show could become another excuse for escapism.
Her complaints led to tickets being taken off public sale and sold instead through the prison governor's office. The governor, Mr John Lonergan, is unapologetic. "There are guys up there who have been regular drug users for years," he said last night. "Since the show went into rehearsal they haven't touched drugs for weeks. They're getting more buzz from being out there on stage than they ever got from drugs."
Colm Delaney comes from the south Inner City and is serving five years for armed robbery. He says he has two broken legs from all the rehearsing. He is the Jet who gets to take on the leader of the Sharks in a face to face fist fight.