Still trying to grasp hold of the muse

Heavy breathing and a few gasps. At first I thought it was a nuisance call. "Hello," I said cautiously. There was a sharp intake of breath. Then a sob. Then the voice I came to know so well. "Agh, God, I don't know you," it lamented.

"Telling me who you are would be a start," I offered. I'm all for a bit of enigma. "It's Deirdre O'Connell," said the voice. Enigma personified.

"Ah, yes, Miss O'Connell," I said. Another sharp intake of breath. "You know who I am?" she asked in disbelief.

"Of course. You run the Focus Theatre."

Her humility was disarming. Then came notice of the crisis, the first of several that would come my way from the same source. She had a production that should have started rehearsal three weeks before, but there was no director and her board had suggested she might find me sympathetic. She didn't know whether to go dark, put her current lunchtime bill on at night or somehow get A View From the Bridge into rehearsal. The implication was that I might have some involvement there. We had one of those circular conversations that never lead to conclusion. Instead I offered to come up to Dublin for the next day's lunchtime performance and talk it over with her afterwards. "You'd come all the way up from Wexford?" she said in awe. She made it sound like a trek across continents on a dog sleigh.

By the time I drove up next day I had decided to ease myself out of the situation. Her call had been confused, to put it kindly, and I had subsequently discovered that the production had been declined weeks before but that Deirdre had simply refused to accept the fact, even when the director in question had started work on a different project. I had also learnt that most of the projected cast, having hung around in hope for weeks, had given up and taken other jobs. The chance to do Miller was tempting, but all the signs said keep well away. I was an established mainstream director. I didn't need this kind of craziness.

At lunchtime she was in more rational form. And there was this actor. The part he had was insignificant. But what presence! Could a small-part actor play Eddie Carbone, one of the great roles in American theatre? I heard myself suggesting he should. Then she introduced me to an extraordinary young woman. That's two parts settled. I found myself breaking all the rules, casting unknown actors on hunch. Next thing I was in rehearsal for A View From the Bridge. It was only then I contemplated the daunting problem of putting this very big play into that very small but wonderful space.

What followed was one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. Ger Carey was quite the best Eddie Carbone I have ever seen; Tristran Gribbin brought a luminous quality to the girl; and Deirdre herself, when on form, was breathtaking as Eddie's wife. I learnt more about what theatre is about in those few weeks than I had before and have since. That good theatre is good theatre and bad theatre bad regardless of venue, budget or style. That the truth is always the truth.

What commercial management in its right mind would touch a play such as Jean-Paul Sartre's Men Without Shadows, a harrowing tale of torture inexorably leading to the most sordid death? What subsidised theatre had Deirdre O'Connell's vision to bring it from page to stage?

It was never easy. Chaos surrounded every production I did at Focus. After every show, I vowed never again. Every time I knew I didn't mean it. There was the magic that attended the chaos, Deirdre's magic. She had little interest in technique or technicalities. but she reached down into the soul of acting and came up with the holy grail for which we had all sacrificed the day job.

I was, of course, in love with her. That didn't stop me feeling rage at her determination to self-destruct. Why was she intent on pulling the columns of the temple she created in on herself? What about me? It was impossible to make her understand. And when you reached out to seize hold of her it was like trying to grasp the muse itself.

Once, when she had failed to provide rehearsal space, leaving my company improvising in a nearby cafe, I sought her out in the street, knowing that she would hate such a public confrontation. I suddenly realised she was echoing me, accusing me of the very crimes of which I was accusing her. It was nonsense but it reduced the row to helpless laughter.

Now I am reduced to tears. So much wonder. So much waste. Now she's gone. She never answered her telephone anyway. She often hid. So nothing - and everything - has changed. When she made that first call to me, I thought, in my innocent arrogance, that her diffidence was out of embarrassment in approaching a fashionable director to work in her little fringe theatre. What really concerned her was whether I would measure up to her beloved Focus. Deirdre O'Connell was its heartbeat. And now that heart has stopped. For once the old clichΘ, the end of an era, rings true.

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