Irish shine at Court

This is hurting me more than you - but it really does look like London is at the centre of new Irish writing for the theatre. The Royal Court, which is poised to reopen after a £26 million face-lift is now confirming, after much "neither confirming nor denying" that Dublin Carol, by Conor McPherson (below), is their opening play. It previews from January 7th and opens on January 12th, and features Brian Cox. "I think," says the Court's artistic director, Ian Rickson, "it's a profoundly rich and moving piece. It's dense and suggestive, dark and brave. It's a wonderful play to have written after The Weir. These plays are often the most difficult."

The play is set in contemporary Dublin, but Rickson, quite rightly, is slow to say what it's "about": "It's about love and death," he says, finally. "It's set in a funeral parlour on Christmas Eve and there are three people. It's about death and life, how do we live and what it is to be human." Just that?

The Royal Court produced The Weir, of course, which is currently garnering slathering reviews in New York. Another Irish writer (Irish? British? Both?) who has been presented at Court is Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell, whose Trust ran there recently. His new play, The Force of Change, about an RUC collision with loyalist terrorists, is opening on February 11th. Other Irish playwrights who are developing plays for the Court include Marina Carr (below) and Gina Moxley. You could say that nearly cleans us out.

Or does it matter where our best playwrights are produced? "Writers are free agents. I think it's a patronising attitude to take a view on where they go with their work," says Rickson. He commissioned McPherson to write for him having seen his monologue plays, Rum and Vodka and This Lime- Tree Bower: "I just thought: `This is a theatre writer - I'd like to see him write dialogue.' " He makes the assertion that McPherson "remains unproduced professionally in his own land" which is not true, of course, as he quickly accepts - McPherson remains unproduced by a main producing theatre, certainly. "I think they should have produced them," says Rickson.

Why does Rickson produce so many Irish plays? He argues that he responds to quality whether it comes out of Barnsley, Kensington or Mayo: "Given all the societal changes in Ireland - the declining power of the Church, the peace talks - it's natural there would be a great confidence and expressiveness about being a playwright in that culture." He adds, happily: "Ireland feeds us."

But do the audiences view the works through a lot of false prejudices? He agrees this issue is "complex", but argues that, say, The Weir, is effective because it deals with loneliness and redemption, not because of its rural Irish setting. He adds that different cultures come to have different symbolical meanings in Britain: "There's the libido in India. Ireland has a spiritual, mythical function in English culture."

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