Glitz and glamour are everywhere. Even the officers on duty outside are in sharp-looking uniforms with shining buttons and polished boots. Everyone is smiling. They welcome us in through the gates of Mountjoy Jail. Prison officer Sean Dooley is on innergate duty. Inside we are guided to our seats by prison officer Sandra Foley, who is wearing an elegant evening number for the occasion, in orange and black. There's great excitement in the prison community on the opening night of Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars: almost all the cast and crew are prisoners. They're "mighty high," says the man from Bansha in Co Tipperary, Governor John Lonergan. "It's a big occasion," he says.
Gay Byrne and Kathleen Watkins sit in the second row waiting for the off. Archbishop Desmond Connell is in the front row, sitting beside Judge Catherine McGuinness. Mr Justice Paul Carney is here too. "Do you come here often?" we ask him (the way one does of a night at a gala event). "I'm here every year," he says.
Paul Reynolds, RTE's crime reporter, who sits beside his fiancee Judy Mooney, is here every year also. He enjoys the play and the feast afterwards, too, at which 300 guests are invited by Lonergan to partake of "physical and spiritual food" in the prison's chapel. Our host has his own personal fan club too - in particular actors Jeananne Crowley and Claudia Carroll. "He's the most attractive man I know," says Crowley of John Lonergan, who is out of earshot. "I haven't time for any interviews," says a very busy Prison Officer John Dooley, a member of the production team. "I'm up to my eyes." Billy Crystal at the Oscars didn't have as much to do. Tola Momoh, the production's stage manager, encourages us to fill the white envelopes, which come with our programmes, to support three charities that provide a range of services for those in need - Trust, St Vincent's Trust and Exchange House. "That may be a bit rich coming from an exfraudster like me," he says, "but you're going to have to trust me on that . . . You will not end up in jail for being generous." Any form of a donation - cheques, IOUs, credit-card donations - would be accepted, he told us, smiling warmly at his captive audience.
Lulu Reynolds, the director, who has been involved with the Theatre Project in Mountjoy since 1986, received congratulations and a bouquet of flowers from her appreciative cast and crew afterwards. They all hope she will return next year to direct another play and produce another great theatrical experience. And so say all of us.