Stage struck

Peter Crawleycounts the ever-expanding cast list

These are good times to be a stage actor. Or so it would seem. Invest three hours in The Crucible at the Abbey, and you'll see what I mean. That cast may seem so familiar to that theatre it could declare itself a de facto ensemble and refuse to leave, but there's something impressive about their curtain call: 21 performers fanned across the stage. That's a hell of a lot.

Things are just as busy in the Gate, with what must be a numerologically significant 21 performers also on the books of Sweeney Todd, while the Peacock recently finished a run of Edward Bond's Saved, in which 10 actors presented the unbearable moral dangers posed by televisions and stones. This may not seem significant to a film audience accustomed to multitudes of flailing pirates, or anyone capable of keeping pace with the tangle of lives in, say, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment or ITV's Emmerdale. But, in a modern theatre measured out in three-handers and two-handers, this counts as gigantism: two's company, 21 is a mass.

Why are the dressing rooms of our bigger theatres currently so crowded, then; and, more importantly, are there enough mirrors to go round? Some of the reasons are surely artistic, others have something to do with political conscience, but all of them come down to money. If the Abbey has interpreted its brief as to engage directly with society, it helps that it has a deservedly huge budget and a greatly improved space to put a fair chunk of that society on its stage. The Gate, though well funded, depends more on an extremely loyal audience and good box office, which can make its programme seem risk averse. Sweeney Todd, a maverick musical, was a huge gamble. Thankfully, the gamble is paying off.

But neither Sweeney Todd, The Crucible, Saved, Don Carlos or any other "big" play you'd care to mention is a new work, and - pause for effect - none of them are Irish. (Let's overlook Druid's recent Synge cycle on the grounds that those plays are very old; and the collected works of Paul Mercier, on the grounds that he ruins my argument.) Bigger is not necessarily better (Sam Shepard's Kicking a Dead Horse, a one-man show, will likely prove the Abbey's most successful production this year) but sometimes a big idea deserves a big cast.

Last year, Tom Murphy told an audience about once being turned away from a dance and how a friend prompted the incident into the shape of a play.

"What's the problem?" asked his friend. Murphy didn't know. "There has to be a problem if it's a play," the friend explained. "Maybe they haven't got enough money to get in."

Why do you say "they", Murphy asked. "Well, I wouldn't be standing here talking to myself, would I?" the friend replied.

That's a good argument against monologue plays, but in that little development there's something more instructive for playwrights, theatre programmers, funders and audiences alike. Sometimes it pays to think bigger.