Backstage at the Gaiety

In March, the great 125-year-old Gaiety Theatre changed hands for the second time in three years, when Break for the Border sold it on to MCD rock-promoter, Denis Desmond. Desmond owns 50 per cent of the Olympia, whose fortunes have been turned around with the help of gigs and bars, but there is concern that if the Gaiety went the same way its architectural and cultural value would be severely compromised.

Yet, for the moment at least, the Gaiety doesn't look like degenerating into a "five-storey disco", as one member of Government put it recently. Executive director John Costigan, who seemingly has Desmond's full support, has fiercely protected the theatre's identity, and even turned out a respectable profit. As a result, he has managed the interesting trick of spanning three ownerships, since he came in 1996 under Gerry O'Reilly, owner of Bad Bob's and Lillie's Bordello.

A veteran of the touring Irish Theatre Company in the 1970s, the Abbey and later the Dominion Theatre in London, Costigan has steered the Gaiety, on an annual turnover of roughly £3 million, into average net profits of £300,000, and he expects an upturn in the unpublished 1998/9 figures.

The playbill has been an aesthetic riot, from Opera Ireland and Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF) shows to Rathmines & Rathgar operettas, imported musicals (from The Roy Orbison Story to a Lionel Blair panto), and honking populist comedies, including Costigan's successful production initiatives with Brendan O'Carroll. Every year, the time-honoured nine-week Gaiety panto romps home with almost a third of the annual profits. And there is also a strong revenue injection from the weekend club-gigs, Salsa Palace and Soul Stage.

Costigan has also lobbied hard for refurbishment of the theatre. The last time the building saw real renovation was in 1984, when then-owner Joseph Murphy of JMSE ploughed in £1 million. From a commercial point of view, theatres don't justify that kind of investment, and so Costigan has spent more than two wearying years trying to drum up public funds for the theatre. In February 1997, towards the end of Michael D. Higgins's term as minister), Costigan applied to the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht for CDIS Euro-funding but was turned down. Then in April 1997, Break for the Border put the Gaiety back on the market, and Costigan put the idea around that maybe the theatre should go into public ownership.

This is where the notion of the Gaiety as an opera house gets jumbled with another vaunted new Opera House/Centre for the Performing Arts - one which was to be part of the Docklands Development. This idea was first publicly ventilated in 1997 by Laura Magahy, then a member of the Arts Council, in an interview with the property section of this newspaper.

This new, £14 million opera house idea seems to have faded somewhat, although it may still lurk out there somewhere. Attention returned to the Gaiety as a possible alternative for a number of reasons: its refurbishment needs, to cater for productions by its high-profile, Arts Council-subsidised tenants, Opera Ireland and the Dublin Theatre Festival; and the fact that it was still on the open market.

Sile De Valera's Department of Arts, Heritage, Gaeltacht and the Islands. This, in the face of the "privatisation fever" of the current government.

From December 1997, Arts Council director Patricia Quinn, finance officer David McConnell and drama officer Phelim Donlon, were actively exploring the idea and voicing concerns about the Gaiety's profile as a "lyric theatre" in the context of the club-gigs which bring hundreds of latenight drinkers crashing in every Friday and Saturday night.

Last September, the Arts Council commissioned an independent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers on the viability of the theatre, in the event of it falling into State hands. The report stated firmly that, yes, even without the clubs, the Gaiety was a viable option, thereby avoiding a further drain on Arts Council revenue grants, or in the jargon, "deficit funding". Break for the Border even offered the State a phased payment scheme over three or four years. The report was endorsed by the Arts Council and sent to the Minister for the Arts, who was still examining it when Desmond bought the theatre for £4 million. The Minister has indicated that because Desmond intends to run the theatre as a "legitimate performance venue", she does not foresee the need for State involvement.

But last December, with the ownership up in the air, Costigan turned his lobbying attention to the new Millennium Committee, a Taoiseach's Department project to celebrate this "unique benchmark of civilisation" with £30 million of Exchequer funds to spend on worthy projects under such themes as Partnership, Children, Religion, Environment, Reconciliation and of course, Celebration.

The Millennium Committee is chaired by the Minister of State, Seamus Brennan and includes AIB and Bank of Ireland bosses, former minister Peter Barry, U2 manager Paul McGuinness and Boyzone's Ronan Keating, as well as the outgoing chair of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Eithne Healy and the chair of the OPW, Brian Murphy. Until recently, it also counted among its number Paddy Duffy, then special adviser to the Taoiseach. But in early June Duffy 's Consultants, which advised NTL on the take-over of Cablelink. Days later, it emerged that Dillons was also preparing the Gaiety application to the Millennium Committee - another collision of interest for Duffy which Bertie Ahern had to address in the Dail on June 16th. Ahern stated that he was informed by Dillons that the firm "had no involvement in or knowledge of any earlier proposal for the State to purchase the Gaiety Theatre . . . That idea," continued the Taoiseach, "dates back from the autumn of 1997, long before any involvement with Dillons, and relates to the possible use of the Gaiety Theatre as an Opera House and its acquisition by the State for that purpose. It was one of dozens of ideas relating to cultural institutions or national monuments, real or potential, being put forward as part of an initial trawl."

Ahern's Dail statement also revealed that Duffy was a director of the brand new Anna Livia Opera Festival, which is already booked into the Gaiety for June, 2000. Sile De Valera as regarding such a proposal for State purchase as "significant", remarking that the theatre is "continually at risk as a legitimate theatre venue." The Department has made no comment on this.

The Taoiseach put a number of documents into the public record, including the Millennium Committee's "sequence of events" with regard to the Gaiety proposal. Apparently, Costigan lobbied Duffy personally in a letter on December 4th 1998, submitting an all-or-nothing proposal for funding of an optimistic £5.1 million, over one-sixth of the entire Millennium Committee budget. In January, Costigan engaged Dillons to prepare a case, although he states he had no idea Duffy was a non-executive director.

This initial application was deemed by the Millennium Committee on February 18th last to be "not suitable". After Desmond bought the Gaiety in late March, Dillons continued to act for the theatre, although the consultancy was not represented at the presentation of a new scaled-down application for £3 million. Costigan, architect Gar Houlihan, Maureen Potter and David Callopy, general manager of Opera Ireland, all argued the case for this funding. After reconsideration, the Millennium Working Group, which included Paddy Duffy and a number of civil servants from the Department of the Taoiseach and Minister Seamus Brennan, again judged it "not suitable" on April 19th.

A month later, the working group considered an unsolicited letter from Desmond, written after consultation with Costigan, containing written assurances on how any public funds would be safeguarded by the appointment of a trust; and a guarantee, in the event of the disposal of the theatre, of a payback to the State.

The following day, May 20th last, the committee about-turned and agreed to recommend to Government an award of £500,000, subject to many formal legal agreements. According to the committee, several members supported this. Then the revelations about Duffy's business interests were made, taking the committee by complete surprise. O Riada Trust and The Right Word Company, Ltd.

The Anna Livia Opera Festival, fronted by whose Artistic Director is Bernadette Greevy, is already booked in for June 2,000 - at the Gaiety! - although 300,000 was drawn down in this year's budget, routed, oddly enough, through the Department of Education (It is reliably rumoured that a proposal on the matter was sent last year from Finance to the Arts Council, and was returned with a strongly negative response).

After Duffy's resignation from the Millennium Committee, the £500,000 award to the Gaiety was ultimately upheld. But it has been designated for the refurbishment of the public front-of-house area, with huge legal guarantees now sought, including Arts Council and OPW representation on the board (even though the Gaiety operates without a board, with Costigan reporting directly to Desmond), and assurances of appropriate use of the theatre. The Millennium Committee is seeking legal advice from the Attorney General's office, and many hurdles remain, including Cabinet approval, before the money can be drawn down.

The essential issue here is that the Gaiety has always been in private ownership, and the only State funding it has ever received was an Arts Council one-off grant in the late 1970s to install a sprinkler system. Refurbishment of the front-of-house area with State funds is less problematic than refurbishment of the interior, because, the reasoning goes, the non-paying public could enjoy it

So Costigan's proposals for the renovation of the Gaiety's interior (despite strong support by Dublin Corporation, the Dublin City Centre Business Association and Cothu, and despite Desmond's pledges of heavy matching investment) remain on the agenda - still merely proposals.

Dublin Theatre Festival director Tony O Dalaigh cites many big dance/theatre productions which he could not bring in due to the "exceedingly narrow Gaiety proscenium" and the limited flies. David Collopy of Opera Ireland, which itself is trying to raise funds in the US towards purchasing the Gaiety, describes it as "the only decent opera house in Dublin". Yet its infrastructure "dates back to the production and safety standards of 30 years ago". He illustrates the tiny size of the orchestra pit with reference to the recent Salome (when the percussion section was miked in from a backstage store-room); or a Turandot some years back, when the percussion was ranged up the right-hand side of the parterre. Despite being lashed together, at one stage it began to rumble down the slope towards the pit. Such factors prevent Opera Ireland from entering into co-productions with other European companies.

Yet if the Gaiety's future hangs in the balance, Costigan has programmed up to June 2000, including Opera Ireland and the Dublin Theatre Festival, Druid's Beauty Queen of Leenane, Noel Pearson's production of Juno and the Paycock, directed by Garry Hynes, Barabbas's Whiteheaded Boy and even Rough Magic, whose School For Scandal did "decent business". The only gig, he asserts, is Fascinating Aida - and of course, a Jack and the Beanstalk to see us into the 2000s.

With Desmond's strong backing, it seems, Costigan is sticking to his guns.