Happy Birthday Druid

IT was no ordinary opening night. An unattended bottle of champagne stood on a table on the Galway's Town Hall Theatre stage, away from the cast and crew of Druid Theatre Company's 21st birthday production. They had gathered to meet the President, Mrs Robinson, after the curtain had come down on an extraordinary performance of Brian Friel's The Loves of Cass McGuire.

The bottle suddenly erupted and the cork flew skyward. Leading actress Marie Mullen, declared: "There's Siobhan." There was laughter. The connection was easily made Siobhan McKenna, the doyen of Irish theatre, was there in spirit, and that was most apt.

For Marie, who played with Siobhan in Druid's stunning production of Bailegarigaire, was emphatically dismissing comparisons with her great friend at the celebrations later in the vaults of The Quays Bar, though Druid devotees deemed the comparison thoroughly valid.

Her husband Sean McGinley an essential ingredient in many Druid hits over its 21 years - led the congratulatory kisses, closely followed by arguably Druid's number one supporter, Tom Kenny of Kenny's Bookshop, one of the few to witness in person how a small troupe became an internationally revered company; then to now.

"Running a bookshop close to Druid put you in the front line for questions like `Have you any photographs of what a sheebeen in north Mayo looked like in about 1890? The interior of a famine cottage? Ten books by Eugene O'Neill? Get me this prop? Find me that prop? Not today - yesterday," he explained by way of personal memoir.

Druid's consultant artistic director Garry Hynes disguised opening night nerves with the aplomb of a Oscar winning actor and found time to play host early in the evening as passengers on a special Iarnrod Eireann sponsored rail carriage from Dublin pulled into Ceannt Station. Excursionists included outgoing Arts Council Director, Adrian Munnelly, the writer Colm Tobin, Harold Fish of the British Council (who supported the production) and Carmel Foley, chief executive of the Employment Equality Agency.

The President and Druid Patron, Mrs Robinson, provided the perfect audience warm up with a presidential salute to the three founders, Garry, Marie and Mick Lally, and her Druid memories. She told of arriving in Galway recently when her brother, senior counsel Henry O'Bourke, said: "Let's go to the theatre!" It's good to think that a president can do something on the spur of the moment.

Chapel Lane, Druid's spiritual home, could not house a fraction of the hundreds wishing to celebrate the birthday, so the Town Hall Theatre was the venue for the gala opening. Even there, however, there was no room for many loyal local supporters a source of a little rancour.

Among those who made it, was Galway Arts Festival manager, Fergal McGrath, delighted for distraction in these pre festival days. His counterpart with the Galway Film Fleadh, Julia Roddy, was equally unruffled, with less than 10 days to go.

Among the loyal Druid supporters were sculptor John Behan, former Abbey marketing manager and once Druid publicist Tomas Hardiman, now with a base in his native Galway, and Breda Ryan of the city's Ardilaun Hotel, proud of having seen those remarkable early shows of the late 1970s.

Above all, it was a special night for former Druids, like Garry's brother Jerome Hynes, once the company's administrator, now chief executive of Wexford Festival Opera, and actors such as Kate O'Toole and Sabina Coyne, wife of Michael D. The party continues, with a bash for everyone who ever worked for Druid tomorrow at the Ardilaun Hotel after a matinee performance.

Those days of some innocence and wonderful voyages led to sophistication and ever increasing dramatic excellence. The new Loves 91 Cass McGuire showed that Druid's unique vibrancy links the first to the 21st year, and has survived many highs, and just the odd low, unscathed.