There is expectation and a degree of nervousnesss in the air at the Gaiety Theatre. Niall Toibin (at 70 years of age) is about to go on stage to perform his one-man show, Sweet And Sour Grapes. The bar is filling up with friends, family and one or two Labour men. Ruairi Quinn TD and Brendan Howlin TD are spotted in one party. Brian MacLochlainn, director of the show, is out front beforehand, along with his wife, Mary MacLochlainn. "I'm petrified for him, I won't be able to watch some of it," he says about Toibin. "He's just as nervous as anybody who takes the stage seriously. He'll be on for two hours. He has a wonderful capacity for dialogue and language. A lot of his material is comment on the Irish condition. I'm only the director."
Sighle Toibin, Niall's daughter, says her father does get nervous before a show but "he handles it very well". It's a week of opening nights for the Toibins, she says. Her sister, Fiona Toibin, opens in the lead in Conor McPherson's play The Weir, in the O'Reilly Theatre in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, US this week. Judy Toibin, mother of all the Toibins and wife to the great man himself, chats quietly to her oldest friend, Peggy Aherne.
Also waiting for the lights to go down are Willie O'Reilly, chief executive officer of Today FM, who has come along to enjoy the show with his wife, Christine Metzger, from Germany. One or two friends ask if he has recovered yet: the station had a staff party in Clontarf Castle last week to celebrate - "now that we're in the black," he explains.
Actor Bill Golding is looking forward to the show. "This should be a tonic," he says. Glenroe actor Philip O'Sullivan, who plays Father Tracey in the soap, and his wife Sandra O'Sullivan are waiting to take their seats too.
More well-known faces arrive: broadcaster Ronan Collins, who is a "sometime golfing companion of Niall Toibin's", with his wife Woody Collins, and Ronnie Drew and his wife Deirdre.
And here he is! In the flesh, subject of the up-coming Lyric fm Gerald Barry Festival. What? He's not dead? And not even old or grey. Well, he is grey-haired, but Gerald Barry, focus of a major festival, is a youthful 48. "It's as if all your past sins have come back to haunt you," says the Clareman. He says he thinks he'll "survive" being the subject of a festival. "It's wonderful and it's daunting. It's horrifying that the music stretches back quarter of a century. There's never been so much of my music and theatre-work in any one place before."
A number of composers have turned out to celebrate one of their own and a festival in his honour. Barry's work is so celebrated and revered, both at home and internationally, that four days of his music has been organised.
The famous Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will perform during the festival, says a proud Harold Fish, director in Ireland of The British Council.
Also spotted is Roger Doyle, a composer and a Dubliner, who will be seen from early next month on stage playing the piano in the Gate's production of Salome.
Donal Hurley, another composer from Dublin, is chatting to Cork woman Eve O'Kelly, director of the Contemporary Music Centre which is situated beside the recently collapsed 18th-century Fishamble Arch. And speaking of Fishamble, she says that if Handel were alive today, he'd undoubtedly be a regular at the centre, which provides publicity, back-up information and support to composers. Seamus Crimmins, head of Lyric fm, is up from Limerick to give the festival his blessing. It "celebrates a living composer who has been at the cutting edge of music for 25 years," he says. Other notables at the soiree to launch details of the festival - in Dublin, in June - include Maura Eaton, music officer of the Arts Council; architect Denis Looby, from Clonea, Co Waterford; and Brigid Roden, chief executive of Cothu, the business council for the arts.