The upstairs bar of the Abbey Theatre is buzzing after the opening performance of Medea, with Fiona Shaw in the title role. The gala audience is full of admiration for the star. Gay Bryne and Kathleen Watkins, who are just back from Dungloe in Co Donegal, are both delighted. "I'm crazy about Fiona Shaw," he says. "When she was here nine years ago I fell madly in love with her, with her humour and her fun."
Shaw's uncle, Dermot O'Flynn, a retired surgeon and former president of the Royal College of Surgeons, is here with the star's father Dr Denis Wilson and mother Mary Wilson, who is in a sari-style dress of blue and turquoise. All three are beaming with pride.
The writer Jennifer Johnston is relaxed and happy having just submitted her latest novel to the publishers - The Gingerbread Woman is due out in September, she says. After two years' writing, she's delighted to be footloose and fancy free again. She chats to Harold Fish, director of the British Council in Ireland, and his wife Barbara, who are preparing to leave all their friends in Dublin in December and settle in Germany. But before they go, there's work to be done. He and Ivana Bacik, Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at TCD, are currently in cahoots about an up-coming conference, which aims to highlight the increased profile of women in the legal profession. It will take place in Dublin Castle in November.
Also enjoying a drink in the upstairs bar after the performance are Seamus Smyth, president of NUI Maynooth, and his wife Rosemary. They're off on a South African jaunt to attend a world conference of university presidents later this summer.
The composer, Gerald Barry, is here too, girding himself for a busy summer ahead what with the up-coming Lyric FM Gerald Barry Festival in his honour and next month the first performance of his latest composition in the Albert Hall in London. Richard Wakely, managing director of the Abbey, is beaming too, celebrating the night's production, on foot of a more personal production - the birth of a baby boy at the weekend in the National Maternity Hospital. Eight pounds, he boasts.