`That's the playwright himself," says a fan, pointing at Martin McDonagh, who scampers off like a frightened fawn. But the shy McDonagh does attend the Gaiety Theatre for the opening performance in Dublin of his play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane. He's in the company of his older brother, John McDonagh, a screen writer, and a number of their friends.
They chat to sisters Olivia and Rachel O'Flanagan and actor Dave Wilmot. Martin poses for the photographers with two more actors - Amelia Crowley and Dawn Bradfield, from Macroom, Co Cork, who won an Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award for her role in The Lonesome West and was also nominated for a Tony.
Maybe it was thoughts of the lumpy Complan and the stale Kimberly biscuits which feature in The Beauty Queen of Leenane that did it but Robbie Coltrane, aka Cracker, was in no mood to chat at the interval. "I'll be back in Dublin next week, can you come back then?" he said, turning away. Ah, no, now. Time and tide (and On the Town) wait for no man.
Actor Mick Lally has come along to enjoy the performance too. He sits in the dress circle - not on stage "thankfully, for a change" - listening and loving the lines. "I've seen it a few times already," he says. He has also been part of the great McDonagh story, having played in another of the trilogy plays, A Skull in Connemara. Lally, just back from an extended tour, opens next week in Tallaght's Civic Theatre in Beckett's Happy Days. Garry Hynes, director of the play, is out front welcoming friends and colleagues. Ciaran Walsh, the new managing director of the Druid Theatre, is there: "My feet haven't touched the ground since I hit the west," he says.