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This week sees Ben Barnes’s ambitious plan for Waterford’s Theatre Royal come to fruition. Yet when his troubled tenure at the Abbey ended in acrimony in 2005, the idea of running another theatre in Ireland was the last thing on his mind, he tells PETER CRAWLEY

ON A BRIGHT morning in Waterford, Ben Barnes walks unhurried and contentedly through the freshly redeveloped complex of the Theatre Royal, a venue that first opened its doors in 1785. He stops to point out various restored or rescued features of the oldest Irish theatre in continuous operation. Here, a series of tall, bright windows which had been concealed by the auditorium wall for 150 years, now illuminating a corridor between the theatre and Waterford City Hall. There, a more recent staircase hidden from public view, which he dismisses as “brutalised 1960s functionalism”.