A new stage for the Abbey (Part 1)

At least since the time of Oscar Wilde, the conventional language of the urban theatre professional has involved pretending not to care. Ben Barnes doesn't speak it. Meeting him in the fog of the morning after the Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards dinner, his style is in marked contrast to the cocked cigarettes and air kisses of the night before.

Did he stay late at the Burlington? "No, I left early because I was meeting you this morning." Sitting in the Abbey in a grey Vneck jumper - under Jack B. Yeats's portrait of Maire O'Neill, the colours of which, he mentions on the way out, go with the new colour scheme of the office - he is careful, measured, intense.

It may well be that it is this personal style - startling eccentricity in the theatre world - which led some to describe his appointment as artistic director of the Abbey as a conservative one. He was described in a profile in this newspaper as "a safe pair of hands". "Damning with faint praise," he says. He cares and it shows. "I tried to shake up opera in this country by founding Opera Theatre Company . . . I did work in my early career at the Peacock with Neil Donnelly . . . Nobody ever refers to my production of Sharon's Grave (by J.B. Keane) at the Gate which tried to take it completely out of the naturalistic style . . . Nobody refers to my take on Juno and the Paycock (at the Abbey in 1998), the freshness of that production . . . There's this shorthand that this guy's done nothing but direct Bernard Farrell and John B. Keane."

Then he reaches for a crisply printed curriculum vitae, ready for me to take away. Carefully marked with highlight pen are the facts that he has directed 20 premieres of new Irish plays, has directed 28 plays from the Irish repertoire, and worked on new plays or "significant" revivals with Brian Friel, Harold Pinter, Bernard Farrell, Tom Stoppard, Graham Reid, John Banville and Jim Nolan, "among others". There is certainly nothing "conservative" about the CV; what seems "conservative" is that he has it at all, or more, that he doesn't pretend he doesn't have it.

Similarly, he didn't pretend he didn't want to be artistic director of the Abbey. It annoys him that people have characterised him as "champing at the bit", and he counters that he never formally applied for the job before last year: "I've worked as a theatre director in this country for the last 20 years. Clearly at this stage in my life I would have an aspiration to run the national theatre. Categorically, I never formally applied for the job until last summer because I didn't feel I was ready for it. Now, at 43, I have the experience behind me, but also hopefully the energy before me."

Those familiar with the Irish theatre world will also be familiar with the broad strokes of Ben Barnes's CV. In brief, here they are: he was born in Wexford of parents both interested in Wexford Festival Opera; he studied history in UCD, was active in Dramsoc, and won an Arts Council bursary to study under Joe Dowling at the Abbey; while a resident director at the Abbey, he became celebrated for his radical revisions of John B. Keane's plays, Sive, The Field and Big Maggie; he set up Opera Theatre Company in 1986; with Arthur Lappin, he set up Groundwork, an independent theatre company which was resident at the Gaiety Theatre, and had enormous commercial success with plays like John B. Keane's The Year of the Hiker and The Chastitute; at the same time he was director of the Gaiety Theatre, and co-produced many hits including Behan's Borstal Boy.

Among his freelance directing credits are Kesselman's My Sister in This House in the Project, Kleist's The Broken Jug in a version by John Banville at the Peacock, and Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the Gate.

There is nothing conservative, either, about his ideas for the national theatre. Champing at the bit he may not have been, but he has so many ideas for his four-year - or, he thinks possibly, six-year - tenure at the Abbey that they must have been maturing in his mind for years. He describes Patrick Mason's contribution as artistic director as "gargantuan" - indeed, he announced at his press launch that Mason's production of Frank McGuinness's Dolly West's Kitchen will transfer to the West End in May. "Because the ship has been considerably steadied, it gives me the opportunity to open out," he says.

He is aiming to get more people into the theatres, but he will do it by different means than by dumbing down, he says. For instance: "I don't think we should commit ourselves to some notional quota of new Irish work. I think we should be excited to get a new play to the stage, rather than saying, `We'll get away with this'." Has the Abbey really been saying this? "I'm not speaking retrospectively," he clarifies quickly, "I'm speaking for myself, for the future."

He will concentrate on fewer new plays of a higher quality, he says, and he will reform the literary department to spend less time on unsolicited work and more on commissions. Next year there will be a "work-in-progress" season, during which new work will be staged "in a minimal way", and he may extend these facilities to other companies.

Aware that the elder statesmen of Irish theatre are getting, well, elder, he will be encouraging playwrights such as Declan Hughes, Marina Carr, Billy Roche and Paul Mercier to think big enough for the main stage. Paul Mercier, who has never had one of his plays staged at the Abbey before, is working on a commission for the theatre, and Barnes hopes he will "have an engagement with the national theatre on several levels, particularly through his interest in the Irish language". The ideas are coming thick and fast. The Irish language? "I've already talked to TG4 about work which would be subsequently filmed. And Conall Morrison is very interested in doing Shakespeare in Irish, for instance."

He is determined not to see the popularity of new Irish writing in London as a problem for the Abbey, and proposes co-productions and co-operations with theatres such as the Royal Court, the Donmar Warehouse, the Hampstead, the Almeida and the Royal National Theatre. He has, he says, been talking to Conor McPherson, whose Dublin Carol opens the new Royal Court tonight.

It seems there isn't a name, or an idea you can think of which doesn't prompt a flow of plans. The comment that plays like Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert would probably have done a major international tour had it premiered today releases the news that "I was talking to Tom Murphy as recently as last Friday. He was sitting where you're sitting now. It seems to me that while people's expectations of Ireland are to some extent confirmed in Friel, they are subverted in Murphy and I don't know why his plays have not resonated more widely. We're going to do a major retrospective season of his work next year."

He wants to put new British, American and continental work into the Peacock, as well as classic plays, so that directors can experiment, free of the expectations of the main stage. As far as the "physical, visual, director-centred" theatre of the European mainland goes, he has been talking to the Berlin Schaubuhne and Deutsche Theater, to the national theatre in Madrid and to the Comedie Francaise about setting up production exchanges and then co-productions.