Andrews Lane's curtain call

Tonight sees the opening of the last play to grace the stage of Andrews Lane Theatre. Its owner, Pat Moylan, reflects on 18 years at the Dublin theatre, writes Catherine Foley

Andrew's Lane Theatre in the heart of Dublin 2 was put on the market earlier this year, with an estimated price tag of €7.5 million. The memories crowd in as its owner, Pat Moylan, recalls her relationship with the theatre, which was officially opened by Maureen Potter 18 years ago.

She remembers how nervous she was as she sat in her usual seat - the last one four rows from the back wall on the side nearest the door - on opening night of the first play, Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune. "The carpet hadn't arrived two hours before," she says, smiling at the idea of how she raced around hammering and screwing in last-minute fixtures.

"I just love this place," she adds, her voice breaking with emotion as she tries to explain her relationship with the building, which began when she was brought on board by its founder, the former stockbroker Hugh O'Donnell.

"I think I just love the fact that so much magic was created on the stage downstairs and I love the excitement of new work. A lot of new plays started here - that gives me the greatest buzz - and putting on older classics that couldn't be seen in Dublin before, like 12 Angry Men." (Reginald Rose's classic had its Irish premiere in the theatre in late 2001.)

"Great things have come out of here," says Moylan, with obvious pride in her voice as she scans the framed posters and photographs that hang around the foyer's walls, chronicling the wide variety of theatrical productions that have opened here, including a slew of comedies, musicals and straight dramas.

Some of the plays to come out of Andrews Lane Theatre are legendary bywords today for success stories in theatre: Marie Jones's Stones in His Pockets, which went on to play in the West End for more than four years, and to wow them in Broadway; John Breen's Alone It Stands, which also played in the West End and toured extensively; and Aidan Dooley's one man play, Tom Crean, Antarctic Explorer, which won a Fringe First at the Edinburgh Festival last year, opens in New York later this year, and returns to the Olympia Theatre next month.

In its relatively short life Andrews Lane Theatre has also staged a number of world premieres, including Roddy Doyle's Guess Who's Coming for the Dinner?, Maeve Binchy's Wired to the Moon, Jimmy Murphy's The Kings of the Kilburn High Road, Paul Mercier's We Ourselvesand Arthur Riordan and Des Bishop's Shooting Gallery.

Moylan says the first time she saw Tom Creanwas in the Civic Theatre in Tallaght at the insistence of director Bríd Dukes, who wanted her to see a little known play that was being staged there. It was "one of the coldest nights . . . It was closing night. I was blown away by it." Moylan brought the play into Andrews Lane "initially for 4 weeks". It came back for five weeks. "I sold it like mad and then I brought it to the Olympia. It broke all box-office records, and it's going back in June. It's another wonderful show that I wanted to sit in the audience and watch every night. That's what great theatre is about, if you want to go back in and sit every night again and again."

She cites Stones in His Pocketsas one of the milestones. "It made me laugh, it made me cry. If it taps into any of those emotions, you are on a winner."

Moylan has an uncanny nose for spotting hits and being able to take them to new heights. "It's not a nose, it's a heart," she refutes quickly. "I just knew that was one of the best plays I had seen with wonderful performances. I was determined people were going to see that. Partly the money I made from that, which was quite considerable, kept this place running financially. If you have productions that go on and make money, you can be lucky." But, she adds, "for all the successes there have been a million failures as well".

Yet the successes helped to pay for the theatre and to stage less successful plays, as well as the ongoing costs of maintaining the old building. It was the cost of updating and repairing which proved too costly in the end and the difficult decision to sell had to be made. "If you get a couple of good ones over the years, you are very lucky," says Moylan.

The theatre's special ingredient is the "simplicity and clear focus" that a small, no-nonsense space forces on productions, says Terry Byrne, who has directed many of the theatre's productions. One of the key lessons he learned from Moylan and Breda Cashe, her business partner in the theatre's in-house Lane Productions company, which was set up in 1998, is the need to market plays. "They are brilliant at marketing. They have very, very good judgment," he says.

Other plays which have played here include the world premieres of The Gingerbread Mix-Upby Martin Murphy with Pauline McLynn and Stanley Townsend; Stolen Childby Bairbre Ní Chaoimh; Deadlineby Robert Massey; and Didi's Big Dayby Paul Walker. This was the first theatre D'Unbelievables played after Moylan was introduced to their manic fun by the late Gerald Davis, when he brought her to An Béal Bocht pub on Charlemont Street to see the two comedians perform. "He had dragged me along. It was absolutely crazy. The kind of comedy I'd never in my life experienced."

It's clear that Moylan's love of and involvement with a play is intense. "I'll be at four of the five previews, taking notes and making sure that everything is right and that's the bit I love. I didn't put Tom Creanin the Olympia to make money," she says defensively. "I wanted more people to see it, to experience the wonderful theatre."

Always, she says, while sitting in the darkness of the auditorium, watching the play unfold, "your greatest fear is because you absolutely love something, that the audience won't get that same feeling". This adds to the myriad worries inherent in running a small city-centre theatre, such as whether there will be "enough people to serve coffee at the interval" or whether the bolts on the toilet doors are working.

The theatre, which was originally two separate buildings that housed a printing works and a clothing company, was bought by stockbroker Hugh O'Donnell and renovated. It has two performance venues, the main theatre, with 220 seats, and the intimate studio upstairs, with 72.

"Everything affects theatre," says Moylan. "The good weather, the bad weather, the election, Christmas, Easter, bank holidays." Even while away on holidays in the sun, her ties to the theatre have, like an umbilical chord, had her phoning to check how things are going. "This has been my life," she says. "Getting change, going to a call box in the heat, phoning."

The playwright and writer Peter Sheridan, chairman of the theatre's advisory board, believes the problem with Andrews Lane Theatre is to do with size. "Its Achilles' heel was its size," he explains, citing the hugely successful soccer satire, I, Keano. Sheridan directed the play, which was written by Arthur Mathews, Michael Nugent and Paul Woodfull, and developed and produced by Moylan and Cashe. The play had to open in the nearby Olympia Theatre as the large cast would not have made it a viable proposition had it opened in the 220-seater auditorium of Andrews Lane. "It's a nice size, a good size, but that has also become its downfall. When shows were successful you still couldn't make money," he says.

The theatre's final play is 84 Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff and adapted for stage by James Roose-Evans. The play opens tonight, though producers Moylan and Cashe agree the decision to stage it "is tinged with sadness".

84 Charing Cross Road opens tonight at Andrews Lane Theatre