The great and the good who support the Ireland Funds gathered in Dublin's Iveagh Gardens behind the Department of Foreign Affairs on a recent Sunday evening for a fund-raising dinner. They were entertained by no less than Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton, with extracts from their new blockbuster musical The Beautiful Game, which opens in London in September. Billed to rival Evita and Cats, the show is about a west Belfast football club at a time of great strife and apparently deals with teenage love across the sectarian divide. Many believe it is based on the soccer club Star of the Sea and its player, the late Bobby Sands, but the authors deny this.
Many in the Iveagh Gardens audience, including Irish diplomats and peace workers, however, know a great deal about that scenario and were less than impressed with songs along the lines of I Love You Though You're a Protestant. One senior official who attended described the whole thing as "excruciating".
Quidnunc is at rholohan@irish-times.ie