Right, I’ve been stewing for far too long. I’ve been saying “Don’t get me started” for a while now, to anyone who’d listen. So, to put them out of their misery, I think I’d better get started. Time to get it off my chest.

To begin with. Nama. Or, more particularly, Anglo-Irish. I’m not an economist, but I strongly believe it should have been let go bust. But I don’t think Brian Lenihan had a choice. Ireland didn’t have a choice. The EU wouldn’t tolerate it. What’s more important: I am fairly sure that the EU wouldn’t have tolerated it under Bruton/Burton either. In return for keeping Anglo-Irish “alive”, Nama was funded by the ECB, and wildly creative accounting was permitted to exclude the enormous debt from our national balance sheet. It’s the politics of saving face, of denying reality.

The European aversion to a “fire sale” scenario is what underpins Nama, and yet, if you think about it, a fire sale is precisely what Irish entrepreneurs of the future need, to get this country going again. Give them access to the empty office blocks and housing estates at the real market value, (ie bargain basement) and let them build up new businesses from scratch. If everything was reset to its real value, then we would be ideally placed to take advantage of a world economic upturn- because Irish and multinational companies would be able to set up here so cheaply, and start employing lots of people in cheap empty factories with employees moving into cheap accommodation.

The money ringfenced to save Anglo-Irish could then go to support individuals caught in negative equity in their primary homes. There is no guarantee that it would “work” for them, anymore than there is a guarantee that it would “work” for Anglo Irish, but at least with home-owners, the terrifying prospect of being made homeless would be removed. To their credit, the Greens have been pushing hard for this “My Nama” proposal, and it has to happen soonest. It is the single most anxiety-provoking feature of this economic depression, and people would be far less worried about the future, and more optimistic, if they felt safe in their own homes. Economic recovery is a psychological thing, not just a matter of statistics.

Preserving prices in suspended animation for a decade does nothing but stagnate, stifle, suffocate. It’s a question of natural cycles – things have to die, to permit new growth to emerge from the rich humus of decaying institutional corpses. Phoenixes arise out of ashes, not out of deep freezers, preserving the living dead with a semblance of life, with air conditioning to suck the stink of gangrene away. Time to bury the dead.

However. We don’t have the option of doing an Iceland. We blew the money that the EU poured into our economy, but the price the EU is extracting from us now is typically European – fudging and shoring up. When you think of it, however, it’s how most countries work.

If we were to leave the euro, and renege on the debts that the banks piled up under our noses, our currency would not be worth the paper it was printed on, foreign investment would collapse, and we would then have to learn what real self-sufficiency was all about. Green ideas of sustainability would be the only ones that would make sense – but in a sort of grim post-apocalyptic way. The only things that might save us would be that we could be an exporter of energy – thanks to wind and wave power, schemes like Spirit of Ireland, and the new UK interconnector. But we would have to forget all notions of being able to afford foreign goods for a generation. I am not so much of a fundy Luddite to welcome that. I like my iPhone too much. Does that make me shallow?

I do believe that Fianna Fáil should be punished severely at the polls next time, for the evident mismanagement of the country prior to the last election. But I do also believe that they are not doing as badly as the opposition claims in dealing with the mess. Would Fine Gael have accepted unpaid leave for public servants,  as opposed to wage cuts in line with deflation? They’d never have gone there. Where would that have left Labour?

I could go on about how affected I am personally by this recession, as a self-employed person, but I won’t. Let’s just say that I, and everyone I know, is coping with less money. But it seems terribly un-PC to point out how dramatically prices are falling.  There was scarce mention in the media about the latest OECD inflation figures, released 2nd March, – because they don’t suit the media’s current, unswerving commitment to foment strife.

In January this year, consumer prices were a whopping 3.9% lower in Ireland than a year ago, the lowest drop in the 30-nation OECD. Nine out of ten countries in that organisation are coping with rising prices. The year before that, in 2008/2009, prices in Ireland fell 2.6%. Doesn’t that make it over a 6% drop in prices since 2008, approximately? Gas is a whopping 25% cheaper than it was in May 2009. Why doesn’t this get front page news, to help people get some perspective on what is happening in the economy, and to their wage packets? It means that, in real terms, Ireland is doing what it needs to do, but can’t do because of the euro – it is the equivalent of devaluing our currency. It may seem painful, or arbitrary, or unfair, and in many ways it is, but in real terms, it’s a hell of a lot fairer than the chaos of hyperinflation, which would inevitably follow if we left the euro.

There is a lot of rage around, understandably. But as Ryan Tubridy said the other day on the radio, (I’m getting over my allergy to him recently), we Irish love blaming others so much that we come out of the womb with a finger pointed.

The truth is, we’re furious with ourselves. We blame Fianna Fáil, we despise the Greens for propping up Fianna Fáil, and yet it was we ourselves who voted Fianna Fáil into government for so long. The fury that is driving the petty and mean-minded industrial action in the public service is because, let’s be honest, the labour movement feels conned by backing Fianna Fáil for so long. Bertie “I’m a socialist” Ahern was no such thing, and well we knew it.

We Irish are lousy at empowering ourselves. We love to feel beholden to others, but we are wary of changing the system that disempowers us. Look at Willie O’Dea – a very successful politician in Irish, clientelist terms. Not because he did anything for his constituency, but he was a master at the art of fixing things for people, of demonstrating how powerful he was in making things happen for his constituents on an individual level. Because there is no independent ombudsman or tribunal where ordinary people can go to get help with their entitlements when it comes to medical cards or social housing. That would be too transparent, too fair, too equitable. But instead of challenging him to think selflessly and creatively to improve the lot of everyone in his constituency/country, they preferred to feel indebted to him and touch the forelock and give him their number one. We love giving away our power. We deserve what comes of it.

I hope come the next election that people who do feel angry about social inequality on this island will vote massively for Labour, not Fine Gael, because I do not believe their values are so different from Fianna Fáil’s. And, naturally, I hope that the Greens get some credit, eventually, for the relief that“My Nama” will give individuals in distress, for the introduction of proper planning law, (if Fine Gael stops filibustering it), for a reformed public service, for the greening of the national brand that a GM-free Ireland will bring, and for the rewards of the enlightened energy policy that will result in us being an exporter of energy when peak oil comes, as it is bound to do come the next boom.

But I doubt it.

</grumpyoldman OFF>

The accusation that Cathal Ó Searcaigh is an exploitative sex-tourist is a lie. This is the conclusion drawn at the end of a twenty-minute film, The Truth about Kathmandu, which will be shown as part of Féile na Gréine: the Solstice Arts Festival, which runs in Waterville, Co. Kerry from Sunday 21st to Tuesday 23rd June. The film consists of interviews that the poet Paddy Bushe conducted with many of those who played important parts in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu. “What I heard in Kathmandu raises huge questions for both Vinegar Hill Productions and RTÉ”, Bushe says. “The young people to whom I spoke felt extremely angry at being exploited. They were angry, however, not at Ó Searcaigh, but at the way they felt used, abused and exploited by the film. These are the Nepalese young people a joint RTÉ/Vinegar Hill statement dismissed as being peripheral subjects, whose permission was not needed.”

Naryan Pant was the young man who was central to accusations made by Fairytale of Kathmandu. In an interview with Bushe, he makes very specific claims of intimidation, bribery and rehearsed answers in relation to his interview in the Vinegar Hill film. He also says that he contacted the film-maker soon after that interview was done, and requested that the interview should not be used, an interview for which he did not sign a permission form. A student leader says he was offered money to give an interview critical of Ó Searcaigh, an offer he declined. The young man in the advertising poster for the film, still on the film website, expresses his anger at how he was manipulated into something “false”. He signed no permission form, and says he would never give permission to be used in the film Fairytale of Kathmandu became. “Would young Westerners have been treated like this?” asks Bushe at the end of the film.

It was in the context of this filmed material that Cathal Ó Searcaigh agreed to go on the Late Late Show earlier this year. The show’s production team had seen some of the material, and it was to have been background material for the interview. RTÉ management’s subsequent insistence on a pre-recorded interview, with pre-conditions and with an RTÉ lawyer present, caused Ó Searcaigh to withdraw from what, in effect, would have been an appearance censored by RTÉ’s corporate management..

The film will be shown in Tech Amergin, Waterville, Co. Kerry on Monday 22nd June at 2.30 pm. See www.feilenagreine.com for full programme.

Anyway, I have been using team blogs to keep people informed of a couple of creative projects I’m planning. They’re a remarkably simple and effective way of keeping a team of people involved, generating interest and enthusiasm, brainstorming and networking.

One of them is about a five-minute documentary I’m going to be making, as part of the excellent Filmbase Documentary Filmmaking course. It’s about adolescence, memory, and emerging gay identity across the generations. When our little team of five have something to show for ourselves, the blog can go public, and so people will be able to read about the gestation process behind the end product, the final film.

I am happy to say I’ve no problem finding young people to take part in the film. But what I’ve come across is the sad fact that elderly gay people are really hard to find. Of course, they exist, but they are not in contact with younger gay people, or even middle-aged gay people. They are disconnected from the gay community, which makes me really question our claim to call it a community. President Mary McAleese asked the question “Where are all the old men?” last year, and has successfully begun to address that question by piloting an outreach programme for old men in Ireland. So, I’m asking, where are all the old gay men and women?

Naturally, the pub and club scene is not for them. But I’m surprised there isn’t a social group for them somewhere, at least in Dublin. In general, gay old people aren’t grandparents, so the chances are that they are much more isolated than their heterosexual counterparts. Are they back in the closet, living in old people’s homes dotted around the country? Who is remembering them? Who is looking after them?

Cathal Ó Searcaigh was invited to appear on the Late Late Show tonight. However, this morning they appeared to get cold feet about allowing him to speak live, and, perhaps under legal pressure from Vinegar Hill, the production company behind the controversial film Fairytale of Kathmandu, informed him that they would only proceed if his  interview was pre-recorded.  Believing that this amounted to censorship, Ó Searcaigh declined to participate. However, he believes the original invitation was made in good faith.

My exclusive interview with him will be published in next Thursday’s Hot Press, which will be the first proper English-language interview he’s done since the scandal broke last year. (An English translation of his interview on RnaG is here.)

Previously, I’ve written about the film in Hot Press here and here. A blog post about the DVD that his friends in Nepal made in his defence is here. My Irish Times article is here. A comprehensive list of links relating to the scandal is here. Some worthwhile commentary on the affair is here and here.

For a limited period, the film itself is available for free download here.

Update: As per her comment below, Neasa Ní Chianán denies that Vinegar Hill put pressure on RTÉ to pre-record the interview.

The next village is a lovely idea – a line from Kafka, and people are asked to respond to it in various ways.  Keith Ridgway asked me to get involved and I thought that doing something with audio would be good.  Then I realised that there was something I had already done in Italy on a little camera, while cycling, that would be perfect for it. And here it is.

It’s a case of a moment in time being recorded for its own sake – and then some time later that recording becomes an answer to a question that hadn’t been asked before.

In one sense, I didn’t learn anything new in the day, my inner geek is alive and well and not too out-of-date, although I’ve pulled back from daily blogging. But I began thinking about things in a different way, which is always exciting.

However much I enjoyed Charles Leadbeater’s presentation, opening the audience up to the vast possibilities of the internet and the new sociability that it brings, I was invigorated by Andrew Keen’s counter-argument, lamenting the cult of the amateur, and the erosion of authority. Not that I accepted it, but it did make me wonder about how, in the rush to embrace the new media, the not insignificant matter of valuing creativity might be lost. His insistence that we have to consider how to monetise it is directly relevant to artists, and not to be sneered at. He rightly points that those who succeed in the new media world are self-publicists, and that the “good old days”, when talent scouts and music label managers would find shy, naive but talented artists and groom them for success, are over.

And yet for every shy artist there is someone else who notices them and wants to help them – and isn’t it better that the route to publicity is so much easier now? (For example, someone came up to me afterwards and said that his wife was shy about promoting herself, how should he go about it? Within hours he had set up a Facebook profile, linked to me, pointed out Andreja Volenec’s MySpace page, I listened to it and loved the track there. I then emailed my lovely colleague Naomi who blogs Off Her Rocker at Hot Press, and said hey, this may not be your thing, but have you heard this?  That’s how it’s done.)

In the last session, Damien Mulley had a dig at David McKenna about why RTÉ wasn’t allowing archive material to be released to Youtube etc etc. The thing is, it isn’t his fault, and, to a tiny degree, it’s mine.  McKenna is perfectly right – it is a legal minefield, largely because of ancient contracts drawn up between Irish Actors’ Equity and RTÉ, protecting the rights of actors against exploitation. I was on the Executive Council of Equity for many years in the 1980s. (Although I don’t think that quite justifies the one line tweet from Mulley I spotted in the ether: “dermod=establishment”).

The struggle to stop artists being exploited is an ongoing one, and may explain why the arts community is so suspicious of the internet. In the polarized and often bitter relationship between TV/Film companies and the actors they employ, too often the actor gets paid off cheaply to give up their residual rights and, in perpetuity, their work is used over and over again, making lots of money for the company.

I once had a stinging email from a musician who spotted that I had recorded on a tiny little camera one song at a unique concert in which he took part, and posted it to my blog. He was furious and demanded I take it down, bitterly lumping me in with all the others who pay no attention to artists and performers. When I pointed out that I don’t make money from this blog, he softened and apologised, and then got the point – I was an enthusiast, marking something special, and adding to the reputation of all concerned. It could never have resulted in any loss of income for anyone involved, but only enhanced their reputation. But his response is typical of many people who have a creative talent and are trying to make a decent living from it.

John Kelly of The View asked me afterwards who did I think was missing from the panel. My response was that someone from the music industry would have been very useful – the subsidized arts community tends to think and network only among themselves, and not have much to do with other artforms such as popular music – and yet how musicians themselves are adapting to the internet (at the speed of light) has a lot to teach us about its strengths and weaknesses. Musicians are way ahead of the music industry in this regard. But on reflection I would also have asked Irish Actors’ Equity to sit on the panel because they have to be part of the solution to free up the archives as well as come up with new contracts that permit work to be released on the Net. YouTube pays royalties for every song that’s lipsynced in its catalogue, meaning that music royalties, in the UK at least, have increased since the advent of Youtube, instead of decreased. The same sort of arrangement could be made about other copyrighted material.

Andrew Taylor’s presentation was the most mind-expanding for me, and it is here. He was looking at the metaphors we manage by, and so it got me thinking, when it got to our session in the afternoon, sitting beside Siobhan Bourke (Saffron Pictures), Damien Mulley, Dermot McLaughlin (Chief Executive Temple Bar Properties), and Jessica Fuller (Still Point Productions). I went off on a flight of fancy about this new social media, the speed of it, and how artists and arts organisations could see their audience/customers like a flock of chattering birds, able to fly as fast and as collectively from one tree to another before they settle. Just watching a public Twitter feed explains what I mean – the continuous stream of consciousness, invisible before the internet, now visible.  Artists/Organisations need to start learning this language and start talking and chattering as much as they can to those online, enter into rapid dialogue, seek out those who mention them and link to them, respond to critics authentically and enthusiastically, and before you know it the critical mass of attention has turned your way, and the chattering crowd has landed on your tree. (Sadly, it appears the sound quality of our session’s podcast wasn’t good enough to put online.)

Organisations have to dialogue with those in social media. The old PR way was just to issue press releases, put up posters, send out fliers. Now, there has to be someone willing to talk, to respond, to defend. The funny thing is that the old way was expensive cashwise; the new way is expensive timewise. The new way suits a recession, don’t you think? In the US, one theatre, PS 112, hosts a bloggers’ night early on in the run of a show, giving away free tickets to bloggers, so that they can notch up the online chatter to Volume 11 for a day or two. (Whereas here, last week, the Abbey Theatre sent me a nice email asking me to put a video for their show up on my blog. I pointed out that they hadn’t replied to my letter of a year ago offering exactly such a space to them, in return for review tickets. I’ve heard nothing since. )

John Kelly was also mischievously asking whether anyone during the entire day had mentioned the phrase “vanity publishing”, referring to blogs? I replied that those of us who are in the vanguard of blogging are, indeed, all flaming narcissists, and find our world incredibly interesting, even if no one else does. But look at the tsunami that’s coming – when the Bebo teenagers grow up and leave home, everyone will be online, twittering away their thoughts, actions, GPS positions, live camera feeds, and most probably bowel movements. Privacy, in the future, will simply mean switching off your phone.

Lastly, enormous praise must go to the brilliant Annette Clancy, who was the organisational genius behind the whole gig, and to the Arts Council for facilitating such a fascinating and necessary meeting of minds.

I suppose I could live-blog with a running commentary with photos, in an as-it-happens kind of way, but you know what? Life’s too short. The conversations will all be available on podcast here.

Only two out of three Irish men say they agree with monogamous relationships.  But 7% have never had sex at all, and the vast majority of men have only had up to three sexual partners in their lives. Although half of men welcome the liberalization of attitudes towards sex as a good thing, for both men and women, six out of ten believe that young men are under too much pressure to have sex when they are young. The same proportion say that how others perceive them matters: a staggering 80% of them identify personal care (skin/hair) as being of importance to them, and of those, half of them say that fashion is “very” important to them in their everyday lives. To repeat: Four out of ten Irish men -  Fashion very important. I know. I don’t believe it myself.

8% of those under 35 admit to having had sex with other men, and again this must be seen as a conservative figure, although men are split 37% – 38% against gay marriage. (This compares starkly, and unfavourably, to the Lansdowne poll in March which indicates 58% of Irish people are in favour of gay marriage. I wasn’t aware the sexes had such different attitudes; or, perhaps, as in all opinion polls, the wording and context of those questions are too different to be comparable.)

Contrary to the positive gloss put on by the manager of the polling company, Ian McShane, who claimed that the figures supported the view that “mens’ wives/girlfriends/partners rank as being extremely important to them in their lives in general,” I see a different story. Of 22 life aspects rated, a man’s wife or partner came only fourth on the list of importance, after financial independence (the same as women in last year’s poll), being able to look after oneself (a no-brainer) and – get this – leisure time. You read it here, folks. Guys really do prioritise football, and pints with their mates, over their wives/girlfriends.

Almost 50% of all men believe that single men have a better life (rising to 69% of younger men), which supports my view that, in general, many men need to be persuaded/cajoled/invited/pressured/blackmailed into entering relationships; it isn’t necessarily the priority for men that women think it is. Although, of course, life takes its toll: by the time we get past 40, most of us concede that being single isn’t better. The majority of men will turn to their spouse or partner for comfort “when the chips are down”, with only one in eight turning to the Catholic church for solace.

But to put it in context, not to mention for the entertainment, John Waters’ column in the  Times is good value. Especially when it comes to understanding the dyspepsia of the modern Irish male, that particularly sour flavour of opinion that affects a large swathe of Irish journalism. Rather than viewing this poll of Irish male attitudes as a spontaneous snapshot of opinion, he says, it may be “more like a videotaped statement of a hostage with a knife to his Adam’s apple.” Ooer. Victim, much! “There is no such entity as ‘men’” he rants, at least “not in the sense that there is nowadays an entity called ‘women’ or perhaps ‘wimmin’. Women are the only gender. Men do not campaign for themselves, nor take the side of other men.”

In the sense that awareness of men’s needs and issues are not generally addressed in the media,
and acknowledging that “gender studies” courses in universities do tend to mean “women’s studies”, I take his point. But the politicization of women, over the past few decades in particular, and the changes they have made to society as a result, were necessary, because men were blind to the (mostly unconscious) collusion between them that excluded and disempowered women. The “personal is political” approach to societal change, that feminists pioneered and worked hard for, has brought about changes that men now approve of – for example, most men disagree with the statement that the man should be the main breadwinner in a household.

Feminists may be disappointed by the finding that most men believe that a woman should accept that her children are more important than her career; and yet compare that with last year’s poll: 53% of women believe it is better for children if their mother is a full-time home-maker. Men and women are not that far apart in their opinions.

Feminism is not the problem that Waters would have us believe, it brought about the beginning of social change that is welcomed by all men and women. Now that attention is being paid to men, in this poll, it is good to see that we are strongly in favour (74%) of workplace legislation to allow us to play more of a role in raising children, and 85% of men believe that single fathers should have exactly the same rights as single mothers. As surprising as that may be, given the lack of media attention to these opinions heretofore, men just have to follow the feminists and organize if they want to effect political change, and not complain bitterly about hard-done-by we are by wimmin.

Brothers, unite!

It’s massive self-delusion, of course, escapism at its most banal; but there are worse ways to escape. Far worse. But it’s still pap; the word comes from the mixture of flour and water that poverty-stricken mothers used to make up for their starving infants; looking like the real thing, but completely useless for nutrition. Maybe if I pour enough of it down my throat I’ll eventually gag and start screaming for the real stuff, the real food of life. Lord, let me switch off the remote. But not yet.

I have seen enough gritty American crime drama to give me a thorough grounding in forensics. I know exactly how to leave a clean crime scene behind me, in the wake of whatever nefarious atrocity I choose to commit. No flies on me. Only on the corpse. I’m certain, now, I could pass a lie detector test, and am sure I could resist the devious methods that clever cops use to get a perp to confess. I know all about psychological profiling and could easily frame someone else for my crimes, if I had the whim. I can predict whodunnit within the first five minutes of each show. It’s all in the casting.

On the medical front, I’ve watched enough hospital dramas to know how to diagnose all sorts of ailments, know when to call for an MRI or CT scan, when and how to intubate, and am a dab hand at knowing when to call the time of death. It’s always when the doctors start sweating. An armchair God, I can recognize which character is a goner, before they even know it. Again, casting is the clue; but in medical dramas, it’s who is playing the relative/partner/parent that matters. Whoever gives good grief.

I don’t buy into the bourgeois notion that we are civilized, as a species; perhaps I’ve been listening to too many stories in the day job, of how badly people treat each other. It’s a jungle out there, I tell you. Give me unexpurgated base behaviour on television, when people are in extremis, battling away for something that matters, fictional or real, and it relaxes me. I’m odd, I know. But, I’m not alone.

But, rest assured, I still have standards. I’ve avoided the TV equivalent of crystal meth: resisted the entire series of Big Brother this year, as have many people I know; hopefully that brand of sadistic TV has had its day, subjecting talentless exhibitionists to the torture of months of boredom. TV presenting is a skill, I grudgingly concede, but  there has got to be a less mind-numbing way of auditioning for the next generation of airhead presenters than 13 weeks of trial by tedium. I will probably tune in for the final week, just to see what character type has floated to the top of the Big Brother Bog this year. Clues. Looking for clues.

My fix of choice, however, my TV smack: fashion. I’ve been compulsively watching reruns of competitions such as Project Runway, Next Top Model and Make Me a Supermodel. What’s weird is that I’ve not been a fashion queen before – prior to this summer of goggle-box gluttony I paid no notice whatsoever to women’s frocks or even pretended to understand labels or seasons or what style is in or not. When a friend of mine lamented that she hadn’t a clue what to wear for a date, I told her that’s when a “gay best friend” would be useful, if she knew of any. I could do with one of those, myself.

But, I’m getting into it now. There is something magical when a model gives good face in a photo, or struts her stuff down a catwalk; something mesmeric, archetypal. Why some beautiful women are photogenic, and others are not, remains a mystery. Those who succeed are instinctive artists, masters of a curious alchemy, producing breathtaking results. Ever since I got hooked, I’ve been noticing women far more; the line of a jaw, the smile in an eye, the set of a shoulder. This is not the same as eroticism; because the multi-billion dollar fashion industry, and modelling itself at its highest level, is all about women performing and posing for other women, judging each other, competing with each other, seeking praise from each other. It is women who define and refine beauty.

At the opposite end of the gender spectrum, about as far as you can go, the Olympics has me watching our lads try to knock the lights out of as many men as possible, in the “noble art” of boxing. And, getting medals for it; more than the USA has managed. A boxer is his body; there is no concern about one’s image, action is all. The clowning, genial, unassuming, warm blast of masculine energy that is Kenny Egan, when he won his place in the boxing finals, caught my attention, arrested me. The ultimate in unreconstructed retrosexual maleness, when he found himself surrounded by cameras, he minced around like a model in the ring, play-acting, pretending to revel in the adulation. But the boxing world is one of the last bastions of a type of masculinity that, in Ireland at least, is blissfully un-self-conscious and dignified. Watching the RTÉ panellists discussing the matches afterwards was a joy. The former boxers discussing the “sweet science” were the epitome of proud, passionate, eloquent working class Irish men. I’m in love, again.

TV. All human life is there. If you watch it long enough.

It is right and fitting that he should be invited to direct Wilde at the Abbey, and An Ideal Husband is an intriguing choice. It’s not Wilde’s best work, but nevertheless it still makes for an entertaining evening.

The first act, a party set at the home of the Chilterns, was a delight – we entered a superbly staged world of a decadent society, the women resplendent in high fashion, the players displaying almost a Commedia dell’Arte physicality, jousting in a heightened Berkoff-esque wordplay that seemed faultless.

However, the darker themes of the play soon become apparent: blackmail, insider dealing, political hypocrisy, honour and character, love and betrayal, redemption and forgiveness. They are too personal for lightweight comedy; or, perhaps, Wilde’s unhappy end reminds us that they are, in truth, no laughing matter. As a result, the flippancy and sparkling irreverence of the play’s opening act is hard to follow.

The set-up is for Sir Robert Chiltern, a rising star of the political firmament, to fall, brought down by the scheming Mrs Cheveley, who can prove his entire career and wealth was based on selling a government secret.

Derbhle Crotty is outstanding as the blackmailer, seductive, sinister and passionately self-serving. Lord Goring, an old lover of hers and a friend of the Chilterns, is, on the surface, a determined, frivolous dandy. He proves to be a man of real substance and character when tested, and becomes a formidable match for Mrs Cheveley, and a reliable friend in need, the catalyst to enable the Chilterns to forgive each other their human weaknesses, and move on.

Lord Goring: All I know, Gertrude, is that it takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. And even more courage to see it in the one you love.

Mark O’Halloran is as perfect a Lord Goring as one could imagine. He brings a sense of being a “wise old soul” to the part, as well as impeccable comic timing, and at times he reminded me of one of my favourite English actors, Leonard Rossiter.

The costumes were sumptuous, and the lighting in particular was excellent (by Chris Davey). I was confused by one aspect of the production, however: the set. Although set and costumes were both the work of the same person, Bartlett’s long-time collaborator Rae Smith, they did not feel like they were in the same production at all. There was no expense spared in the costumes; they were stunning in every detail. The set, however, looked like it would be serviceable enough in a fit-up company in the fifties, on a regional tour; painted plywood boards everywhere, a sort of designer shabbiness, with a post-modern self-consciousness; we see behind the sets to the bare walls and doors, we see the braces and stage-weights, the chandelier has an ugly electric plug showing half way up the chain. The red velvet curtain that falls between acts is bedraggled and torn, but only covers half the wide Abbey stage. I could easily imagine this production working very well in a severe black box, with no pretence at period detail; on the other hand, a decent attempt at a subdued but quality set that allowed the actors to shine would have done no harm at all. But this was neither fish nor fowl, and was distracting to me. Perhaps I expect more from the National Theatre; yet I am usually more than happy to support a production that confounds a certain bourgeois expectation that classic period plays should have gorgeous sets. The sets should never be the point in Wilde; perhaps I am just old-school enough to believe they shouldn’t attract my attention at all.

However, this production is well worth a visit; well-paced, witty, snappy, and passionate. I’ve rarely heard such uniformly crisp, crystalline English accents on an Irish stage, and even though I saw the show in preview, the ensemble acting was as tight as a drum. The dialogue between Sir Robert and his wife, when they are torn apart by the prospect of ruin, is as relevant now as it was then; the corrosive effects of idealization in a marriage, indeed any relationship, and what happens when someone falls off the pedestal on which their partner has placed them. But I was curiously unmoved, as their love was tested; perhaps it’s because in the cynical 21st Century, it’s hard to accept undiluted moral outrage that a politician has a guilty secret. Neither of the Chilterns is easy to warm to, but I don’t believe that is the fault of the actors. Perhaps, in their exchanges, Wilde was safely playing out the many conversations, imagined and real, he had with his loyal wife, Constance, over his own secret life, which would have been incendiary and heartrending. Had the real issues of Wilde’s marriage been addressed in this play, it would have been electrifying. But of course that would have been impossible at the time, so in a sense we are reading between the lines.

Wilde was being blackmailed himself, at the time he wrote this play. The storm clouds were gathering, and he was arrested for gross indecency during its first run. By sailing so close to the wind in his emotional subject matter, but distancing himself from the real matter in hand, perhaps he lost perspective. It is purportedly a comedy, in that it plays around with appearances, illusions and reality, but, at its heart, it is a neutered tragedy. Perhaps a sense of superstition prevented him from cataloguing his hero’s downfall. Maybe he was refusing to tempt fate by presaging his own destruction. Life imitates art; perhaps he believed, or hoped against hope, that by creating a story with a happy ending he could avert the inevitable, and keep the circling wolves from his door. As Wilde would have been very well aware, wishful thinking, as played out in the eventual happy resolution of An Ideal Husband, is antithetical to great art. That Chiltern doesn’t fall, that his corruption does not get exposed, is a happy ending of sorts; but his last words are insecure, self-doubting. It is neither a comic nor tragic story. It is human, but not as dramatic as real life.

The tense exchanges between former lovers Lord Goring and Mrs Cheveley are richly satisfying; and there are elements of pure farce in the final scenes which are timed to perfection. Goring, happily, finds his playmate in the end, in the chirpy Mabel Chiltern, (played delightfully by Aoibheann O’Hara), and they all, seemingly, live happily ever after; a bittersweet backdrop to the real tragedy that befell Wilde, which he must have known was coming. I would give anything to have been in the audience watching this play in 1895, the night the news had been broken that the playwright had been arrested.

All in all, an interesting play played with relish by an excellent cast; like a beautifully accomplished portrait of an imperfect subject, showing its best qualities. Pity about the cheap frame.