One couldn't help feeling that Oscar himself would have delighted in the drama of the gesture. At the opening night of Thomas Kilroy's new play, The Secret Fall Of Constance Wilde, in the Abbey, Oscar and Constance's grandson Merlin Holland asked actor Jane Brennan to wear Constance's wedding ring while performing the title role. Still, it was almost like an appendix to Thomas's wonderful play, which concentrates on Constance rather than Oscar, that throughout the evening and in all the press information, Merlin was introduced as "Oscar Wilde's grandson" and not a mention of Constance's part in the proceedings.
Merlin, a journalist and writer living in London, was obviously moved by the occasion and pronounced the play, "a very strong production". Praise indeed considering Merlin refused to be an adviser on the new film about Oscar, Wilde, in which Stephen Fry plays the lead role, as he completely disagreed with the fictitious and improbable ending imposed on the story. Thomas Kilroy kept a fairly low profile but was doubtless pleased at the number of old friends who flocked to the opening night. Seamus Heaney arrived with his wife, Marie, who has just completed her M.Phil thesis for UCD, while novelist John McGahern (whose award-winning book Amongst Women is currently being made into a film), poets Gerald Dawe and Derek Mahon, and playwrights Bernard Farrell and Hugh Leonard also came along.
Meanwhile, playwright Tom Murphy chatted animatedly with film producer Noel Pearson. Tom will be getting the Abbey treatment himself soon as his play, The Wake, goes into rehearsal with Patrick Mason as director and Jane Brennan in the lead part at the beginning of December. Noel's film of Dancing At Lughnasa had its wrap party last night, with Meryl Streep partying with Rhys Ifans, star of the the Welsh film Twin Towns and Stu- art Townsend, an Irish actor soon to be seen in the eagerly awaited film, Shooting Fish. Brenda Fricker, however, was busy on stage over at the Gate. It has been a busy few weeks for David Bolger. As well as directing movement in both The Secret Fall and Dancing At Lughnasa, he is also working on a new dance piece with CoisCeim which is called Ballads, and is based on ideas of the Irish Famine.
The party went on and on, as upstairs in the Blue Room, the sponsors, Harvey's Bristol Cream, had constructed a billowy pavilion and several of the audience and the dancers among the cast took to the dancefloor to the sounds of the Cafe Orchestra. Meanwhile Merlin held the floor with tales of the past. Oscar would have approved.