Knacks with old and new

THE backbone of Irish theatre consists of the in it many companies who are talents and restrictive finances to generate stage legerdemain, year in and year out.

Among these, the Lambert Puppet Theatre family occupies a remarkable niche, with a dedicated following. The international festival last September, of which the family is the heart, brought puppeteers from many countries to beguile adults and children alike. The public have come to appreciate the importance of this branch of theatre, and of the extraordinary Lamberts who carry its Irish flag.

In the scenic town of Clonmel, the Galloglass company has been developing its own concept of community theatre for the past six years, involving as well as entertaining the local community and touring extensively. This year it provided children's theatre, an elegant production of Oscar Wilde which visited Wales and Dublin with gratifying success and ended the year with a hilarious outing of Boucicault's Shaughraun. Long may it flourish.

Galway's Druid opened its 1996 account with a new play by a new author Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane and was swamped with superlatives. London was next to fall to it, and ended the year touring to the western and northern islands, which seemed inimitably imaginative and right. Druid also found time to produce a beautifully elegiac adaptation of George Moore's story Alfred Nobbs, and a sensitive offering of Brian Friel's The Loves of Cass Maguire. With Druid in form, the west's awake.

The Abbey/Peacock venues carry the burden of being our National Theatre, and have borne it with some distinction. In the main theatre some injudicious programming, involving Behan and Wilde, was offset by entertaining new adaptations from Thomas Kilroy (Pirandello), Tom Murphy (Goldsmith) and Michael West (Beaumarchais). The Peacock went headlong for the new, and scored heavily with a premiere of Marina Carr's Portia Coughlan and with Tom McIntyre's Good Evening, Mr Collins. An impressive touring programme served the four provinces, and carried the flag to England, Paris, Brussels and Bonn. A good year.

The Gate Theatre has the canny knack of balancing the new with the old, and doing both with style. It started and ended its year with popular holiday entertainment in the shape of adaptations of Dickens novels by Hugh Leonard. In between there were Racine's Phaedra in a new version by Derek Mahon a core programme including Beckett, Sebastian Barry, Neil Simon and O'Casey and a new comedy by Bernard Farrell. And there was the huge accomplishment of the export of the extraordinary Beckett Festival to New York, bringing honour to its subject and to Irish theatre. By a short head from the Abbey, this is my Company of the Year.