"Whither the Abbey?": Renovating Ireland's National Theatre

Irish theater productions glitter and vanish like snowflakes in the wintry light of history, yet since 1966 one constant of criticism has held steady for every Abbey production. Since the new Abbey Theatre opened in 1966, a steady doleful chorus has lamented with foghorn clarity the inadequacy of the physical building: its acoustics, facilities, acting spaces, wheelchair access, and visual appeal.Many commentators, including the current artistic director, have pointed to its limits: "the administration accommodation is woefully inadequate, the public areas of the theatre are cramped and uninviting." ¹ Senator David Norris commented "It is about as imaginatively constructed as a biscuit box." ² Further criticism of the physical structure was offered in an Irish Times editorial:

Its site at the corner of Abbey Street and Marlborough Street is too small to accommodate an internationally famous national theatre in the twenty-first century. . . . When the late Michael Scott designed the Abbey Theatre, he was mercilessly constrained by the limits of the site and the result was a theatre in which the acoustics were uneven and the audience felt distanced from the actors on stage.³

Frank McDonald, the Irish Times environmental editor, commented, "Yet its current premises in Lower Abbey Street is widely regarded as inadequate, little more than a tight box encased in grey concrete brick." ⁴ After a fire gutted the original Abbey on July 18, 1951, a new theater designed by Michael Scott opened on the same site in 1966. ⁵ The centenary on December 27, 2004, of the "old lady," as the Abbey is known, approaches, and the chorus of criticism has become ear-splitting and insistent. Should the Abbey move or refurbish its current historic site? Courage and vision to solve this problem are required of the Abbey's present director.

Ben Barnes's appointment as artistic director of the National Theatre of Ireland in January, 2000, generated a cold fog of faint praise. Some regarded him as a "competent, safe pair of hands." ⁶ Spurred to overcome this lukewarm enthusiasm, Barnes has transformed himself into a dynamic, vigorous, and ambitious director. Artistically, he stirred controversy by producing for the Edinburgh Festival the Barbaric Comedies of the Spanish writer Valle Inclan, which portrayed rape and sexual intercourse on stage. It provoked phone calls and a petition prior to its October, 2000, Dublin opening at the Abbey after being described by British newspapers as "the most shocking production in the [Edinburgh] festival's 54 years." ⁷ Yet Barnes's boldness garnered the Abbey eight out of thirteen awards at the Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards on February 11, 2001.

In a prophetic remark, a journalist accurately assessed Barnes's mission several months before he took up the position: "To make the Ben Barnes era unique, a capacity for risk-taking . . . will be vital." ⁸ The biggest risk Barnes has taken is with the "most critical decision in its history" ⁹ --the highly political question of the future location of the Abbey itself. Having been challenged by Barnes's artistic daring in 2000, a packed and enthusiastic Dublin audience awaited his vision for the Abbey's future, which he presented on Wednesday, February 7, 2001. Determined to continue to be a risk-taking artistic director, he announced that the Abbey board's "preferred option" was to move the theater to a completely new site on the south side of the Liffey at Grand Canal Dock sparked a political outcry. ¹⁰

By boldly suggesting moving the Abbey to solve the facilities crisis, Barnes, however, naively contradicted the political commitments the Abbey itself had made to the Irish government in March, 2000, when it argued that the Abbey had to remain on its historic site because it was a cultural beacon and economic catalyst vital to the urban regeneration of the north inner city. These commitments were made as it lobbied for state funds to redevelop its historic site. The government objected to relocation because the...