Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, which has produced a long line of geniuses from Sean O’Casey to Brian Friel, does not put on an annual Christmas pantomine.
But if it did produce a raucous show of punch-ups, mishaps and double entendre, nothing could match the excruciating farce that continues to unfold backstage.
Ireland’s national theatre, founded 100 years ago by WB Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, narrowly avoided having to turn out the lights and declare insolvency on Friday morning.
The entire management board offered its resignation yesterday after a disastrous year in which it managed to lose almost â,¬1-million into a ”black hole” without even noticing.
The Abbey has slipped â,¬3,4-million into the red and witnessed a battle of egos worthy of Oscar Wilde’s cruellest comedy. Now a report by independent financial consultants has accused the byzantine management structure of gross incompetence.
Just when it looked as though things could not get worse, The Shaughraun — the Abbey’s lavishly expensive three-hour 19th century melodrama, which had transferred to the West End in the hope of recouping some cash — is now having to close its run at the Albery Theatre a disastrous two months early.
The Abbey’s centenary last year was supposed to be one long back-slapping celebration. Instead it became one of the biggest arts disaster stories in Europe. First the dull and uninspiring theatre programme was a box office disappointment. Then came a sudden plan to axe a third of the staff.
Next, two writers sparked a vote of no confidence in the artistic director, Ben Barnes. He survived and vowed to stay on until his contract expired this year. But Barnes fired off an e-mail to international arts organisations saying he had been made a ”scapegoat”.
The theatre critic and former member of the Abbey’s advisory board Fintan O’Toole described how the theatre’s financial software programmes were incompatible with each other, figures were in a constant state of flux and accounts were drawn up on paper. The management barely knew what it was spending.
The lavishly expensive revival of Dion Boucicault’s The Shaughraun — a directorial debut by John McColgan, the millionaire co-creator of Riverdance — cost four times as much as the average show on costumes, sets and props. Debts mounted when the theatre realised that it had failed to include in its budget the cost of its national tour of JM Synge’s seminal play The Playboy of the Western World.
But the biggest embarrassment was the loss of about â,¬160 000 producing huge numbers of commemorative centenary diaries which no one bought. One board member admitted on Thursday: ”We forgot to appoint someone to sell.”
Fiach Mac Conghail, a respected independent theatre and film producer, has taken over as director. He is already planning the biggest shakeup in the theatre’s history, tackling a management superstructure which has not changed since Yeats’s day.
The theatre is also to move from its current decaying building to a new site in Dublin’s docklands.
Ireland sells itself as a cultural superpower but some blame a philistine government for the Abbey’s woes, saying state grants have been paltry.
Bruce Arnold, of the Irish Independent, accused the arts minister of living in a ”cultural fairyland”. He said the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, famed for his love of gaelic football, never went to the theatre and was culturally out of his depth.
After Ahern appointed his former girlfriend to a national consumer council this week, Arnold warned of a culture of blatant cronyism. If Ahern intervened in appointments at the Abbey, he envisaged a board full of ”political hacks and ill-suited favourites” who would continue to ”make a mess” of Ireland’s great cultural treasure.
A great history
JM Synge
The opening of Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in 1907 provoked riots with its raucous portrayal of Irish rural life. Later, an Irish-American lobby attempted to have it banned for its supposed negative portrayal of Ireland.
Sean O’Casey
The Plough and the Stars sparked rioting in 1926 with its treatment of the Easter Rising and disillusionment with nationalism. Two years later, after the Abbey rejected his play The Silver Tassie, O’Casey went to live in exile.
John B Keane
The Kerry writer who captured the comedy and tragedy of life in 1950s Ireland was first rejected by the Abbey in 1959. The theatre relented after he won first prize in an amateur drama contest.
Tom Murphy
Murphy’s plays examine Ireland’s transformation from a deeply traditional society to a hi-tech, materialistic, modern success story. He was honoured with an Abbey retrospective in 2001.
Brian Friel
Described as Ireland’s best living playwright, Tyrone-born Friel premiered Dancing at Lughnasa at the Abbey in 1990, perhaps his most successful play in a long list of popular and critical hits. – Guardian Unlimited Â