"I HEAR Michael Colgan is negotiating for a transfer to the Gate" some body beside me quipped as we took our seats for West Side Story. Mr Colgan should be so lucky! It's a long time, at least in my experience, since mainstream Dublin theatre has provided audiences with a show of such electrifying energy and style as we saw in Mountjoy prison on Monday night.
The high standards came from the Pimlico Opera Company's production, tailored to embrace the talents of Mountjoy's enthusiastic amateurs. The small company, funded by a number of generous sponsors - and supported, crucially, by the British Council in Dublin - spends most of the year touring opera to theatres the length and breadth of Britain.
About 10 years ago it embarked on a programme of work in prisons, involving inmates as performers and technical staff in its productions. This work, which has helped keep the debate on penal reform alive in Britain, has included productions of Sweeney Todd at Wormwood Scrubs and Guys and Dolls in Wandsworth prison.
West Side Story was first performed at Bullingdon prison outside Oxford last month. The company asked to bring the production to Mountjoy, an offer enthusiastically accepted by John Lonergan, the governor. The cast, along with inmates of the prison, included performers who have sung at Glyndebourne, the Wexford Festival, the Estates Theatre in Prague, and under the batons of such conductors as Richard Bonynge and Sir Charles Mackerras.
The evening started a little uneasily. Those who had been invited - the great, the glitterati, a few humble journalists - were ushered to special seats at the front, while families and friends of the prisoners were directed firmly to the back. By the interval both halves were united in thrall to the on stage action. There was no overtly political message. But at the start of the second act the members of the two rival gangs, almost entirely composed of young prisoners, sang a reprise of one of the show's great hits, "There's a place for us, somewhere a place for us". There was an intense silence in both parts of the audience.
The elegant theatre programme, produced by the Pimlico Opera Company, made its point with dignity and discretion. The names of all those involved in the production were listed in alphabetical order, with a small note on each.
The credits of those who have been applauded at some of the world's great festivals, been featured on arts programmes on the BBC and Channel 4, were sandwiched between the names of prisoners who spoke of the length of their sentences, what they owe to their families, how they hope to make a better job of their lives when they leave Mountjoy.
One after the other, they wrote of what working in this production has meant to them, how it revealed talents they had never suspected because "they were buried so deep inside me".
IT was Bishop Eamon Walsh, himself a trained barrister and a prison chaplain, who remarked last week that it is no coincidence that 75 per cent of those in prison come from areas of high unemployment. Wrongdoers from other social classes are not filling their share of prison places." Dr Walsh was speaking in the context of the forthcoming bail referendum but his words came back to me in Mountjoy last week.
I have read carefully the many articles and statements on the Government's proposals for limiting the right to bail, and have considerable sympathy for the plea expressed yesterday in this paper that the trauma experienced by victims of crime should be properly recognised. I've been mugged myself, in salubrious Dublin 6, within a stone's throw of Michael McDowell's house and know that the fear which follows even a minor attack can last for a very long time.
What I cannot see, even at a practical level is how changing the bail laws will improve that situation by reducing the incidence of violent crime. On the contrary, we have been told by eminent experts that, because of the shortage of prison places, the effect could be to release convicted criminals to make room for innocent people in overcrowded prisons.
There are other valid arguments against change. Eminent judges have told us that an erosion of the right to bail will constitute a serious attack on fundamental civil liberties. Lawyers have warned that, as always in these situations, those who will be most vulnerable to pressure while in custody are frightened people ignorant of their rights.
It has taken the intervention of the bishops to broaden the debate. What the hierarchy's Commission for Justice and Peace has done is challenge us to consider how the proposed tightening of the bail laws will heal the growing divisions and sense of alienation among the most deprived.
We know well why the Government decided to introduce these changes. The referendum was announced as a populist reaction to events earlier this year, notably the murder of Veronica Guerin, when public emotion about crime was running high. Because all the major parties have thrown their weight behind the changes, debate on the issues has been muted and often confined to legal arguments.
My own view is that both the Labour Party and Democratic Left will come to regret their support for this referendum, that many of their TDs already know that this is not what their supporters want or expect from parties of the left.
On the contrary, they are more likely to agree with Bishop Walsh's passionate plea that we should be prepared to forgo tax concessions in the next Budget on condition that the money saved is put into programmes to help young people at risk "to direct their energies and skills away from crime and into activities to build their self respect and hopes" - the kind of programme, in fact, which we saw in vibrant operation in Mountjoy last Monday night.
POLITICIANS react very quickly and directly to what they perceive to be the public mood. The results of this referendum will be pored over, constituency by marginal constituency, for what they say about the voters attitude not only to civil liberties, but to a range of problems relating to crime and punishment in our inner cities and the measures needed to deal with them.
We are in a pre election period when these policies are already being formulated with a view to how they will affect each party's fortunes next year. Are we to go down the road proposed by those who believe the answer to the problem of crime in our cities is to introduce tougher and more oppressive laws, or can we summon the moral courage to look at the deeper causes of that crime?
It is extremely important that the more privileged among us, the floating voters whose support the politicians will be courting next year, deliver a strong message in this poll. If you want a kinder, less divided Ireland, vote No next Thursday.