Madam, - I feel that Christopher Murray (December 4th) is being unfair when he criticises the review of the Yeats plays at the National Library by my colleague Peter Crawley.
Prof Murray suggests that Mr Crawley should have displayed an awareness of how Conor O'Malley and his family have been intimately involved in keeping the works of Yeats alive.
He also claims that the review ought to have mentioned the Coca Cola-sponsored Yeats season at the Peacock from the early 1990s. Finally, he suggests that allowances ought to have been made for the fact that the Dublin Lyric Players' production took place not in a theatre but in a lecture hall at the National Library.
Perhaps, like Mr Crawley, I'm "too young" to understand this situation fully, but I don't see how the omission of these details can be considered "damaging" to the "proper uses" of Irish theatre criticism. Surely the function of a reviewer is to judge a production on its merits, to evaluate what it achieves rather than what it attempts.
The reputation or family background of directors should not stop a critic from reviewing a production objectively. If the performance space chosen for a play impedes its appreciation by audiences, critics have a responsibility to raise that issue. And it is now more than 15 years since James Flannery's Yeats season took place at the Peacock. Doesn't that support Mr Crawley's assertion that these plays are more frequently read than staged?
I agree with Prof Murray's implication that Yeats's plays are under-appreciated, and I have great respect for the attempts of people such as Conor O'Malley and James Flannery to rectify this problem. And perhaps now is the right time for some Irish theatre company to do for the works of Yeats what the Gate has done for Beckett and Druid for Synge.
For the moment, however, I would suggest that Peter Crawley's unwillingness to allow sentiment, wishful thinking or personality to influence his review should be seen as evidence of the health of contemporary Irish theatre criticism. - Yours, etc,
PATRICK LONERGAN, English Department, NUI Galway.