Sir, - In the many controversies the Abbey Theatre has caused over almost 100 years, it is quite extraordinary how common sense and logic seem to desert the exchanges at a very early stage. So it was something of a relief to find the letter from Ulick O'Connor and others (April 30th) bringing things down to what a certain Sergeant Friday of a long-forgotten radio serial used to call "the facts ma'am, just the facts".
It is certain that the centenary celebrations of our National Theatre, in just over two years' time, will take place, appropriately enough, in the present building; and only then will the extensive rebuilding start, so that an up-to-date, state-of-the-art complex will take its place, in which, hopefully, the players will be properly heard and the stage retain something of the intimacy of the original old theatre. In the interval, of course, another venue will have to be found so that the work can continue, something not at all new for the Abbey: there was that period in the 1950s and 1960s when it found itself, most unexpectedly, for all of 15 years at the Old Queen's. The Carlton Cinema, if available even for a year or two might well be suitable and there has been some talk about renovating the Antient Concert Rooms in Pearse Street which might be very appropriate indeed as it was there that Yeats, Gregory and Martyn launched their Irish Literary Theatre just over a century ago.
Another spell in exile across the Liffey should do the old theatre little harm, while the new building rises on the same site, always and ever its proper place at the corner of Abbey and Marlborough Street, right there in the centre of things as it always was. - Yours, etc.,
TOMÁS MAC ANNA,
Brí Cualaun,
Co Chill Mhantáin.