The sun is slanting across Galway Bay and the glitterati of the west roll up for a special opening night. It's a world premiere and the word on everyone's lips is Druid.
Two old friends and founders of Druid, director Garry Hynes and actor Marie Mul- len, greet each other in the foyer of the Town Hall Theatre. For a minute they're nostalgic.
"It's so sad, coming down here," says Mullen, who has come from Dublin, adding "and so happy". Then, perking up and looking about her, she says: "It looks like it's a good buzz."
Hynes doesn't plan to sit in on the performance of Marina Carr's new play On Raftery's Hill. As is her tradition, she says,
"I'll go and have a piece of barbecued salmon in McDonagh's fish shop and a glass of wine and look out at the sun." But she returns in time to hear the applause and enjoy the post-premiere party.
This is where judges mingle with actors, poets chat to newspaper editors and artists down drinks in the company of politicians. There isn't a Galway shawl in sight.
Judge Mary Fahy poses for a picture with Judge Harvey Kenny, judge of the Western Circuit and Mr Justice Esmond Smyth, President of the Circuit Court, who is just down on a visit from Dublin. Availing of the fine weather in cream linen is David Burke, editor of The Tuam Herald, accompanied by his wife Fionnuala Byrne. "I am a subterranean pillar of Druid," he says, explaining that they've been fans for the past 25 years.
Ciaran Walsh, managing director of the Druid, plans to introduce his parents, Eamonn and Gerry Walsh - from Dunboyne, Co Meath - to tonight's lead, Tom Hickey. The Riordans was filmed on their farm in the 1970s, so they've been told the actor is dying to meet them. They were paid in pound notes back then and they were "paid per beast" too, they say. The young actor, Diarmuid de Faoite, is flitting about, just back after a tour of an Irish-language version of the Martin McDonagh play, called Banrion Alainn an Lionain.
Paul Fahy, of the Galway Arts Festival, has the most impressive ponytail at the opening. "Tilt me, pour me, anyway you want me" urges one T-shirt, but the brightest (lemon-coloured) top worn to the premiere is on Kathy McArdle, artistic director of Dublin's Project Arts Centre, who arrives on the arm of her father, TV director and broadcaster Tommy McArdle. "I still remember my first row with her," he says of Kathy, the eldest of nine. "She was three and a half. She was irrepressible even then," he says, as she smiles at him.
Michael D. Higgins TD arrives with his son, John. The former minister is currently working on his third collection of poems, which he hopes will be ready later this year. It'll be called In an Arid Season.
Two men down from Cavan town for the play are playwright Tom McIntyre and his poet friend, Noel Monaghan. Prof Kevin Barry, of NUI Galway, discusses the play with his friends afterwards. "It's incest before the social workers arrive . . . The play makes a cliche work - the cliche is that the Irish family is in love with itself, but this sees the process from the inside."
Brendan Delap, editor of Foinse, the Irish-language weekly newspaper, who has travelled in from C4 - Spiddal - for the opening, comments afterwards on the play: "Ta se iontach duairc ach ta an teanga iontach saibhir". We all nod pensively, mulling over his summation - that it is wickedly bleak but wonderfully rich in language - before we go back in for the final act.