THE NEW (OLD) ABBEY

I went to see a matinee performance of "The Big House" by Lennox Robinson at the Abbey Theatre today.
I especially wanted to see the new interior. Last year the seating was redone so that now every seat is unobstructed. In the old auditorium (opened in 1966, the year of the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Revolution) the main part of the auditorium had seating that was pretty much all on the same level. There was also a balcony for better views of the stage. Now the balcony is gone and all the seats rise up steeply from the stage - a much better arrangement.
The play, first performed in 1926 very shortly after the events that it depicts, dealt with the history of a "big house" in West Cork during the period after the World War when Ireland saw its own war, first with England, then with ourselves, and then with the new Free State Government that tried to put an end to the Republican insurgency. The big house survives most of these challenges because of the respect the people of the (fictional) village of Baldoney had for the Anglo-Irish family that owned the house. But in the end the Irregulars (Republican fighters who rejected the treaty with Britain that gave Ireland a partial independence) torched the house, as they did many others.
I really enjoyed the show. There is something about live theatre that is magical. There is no amplification in the theatre, just the projected voices of the actors to command the attention of the audience. The Abbey is a really nice place now - it's hard to believe that the Government is going ahead with plans to build a whole new Abbey Theatre in the newly developed Docklands area. The Abbey is such a fixture of the inner city - it has been at this site in
Abbey Street since it opened in 1904 (The present building was built after a fire destroyed the original, but it was rebuilt in the same place in Abbey Street). I think we do need a new, modern theatre for spectaculars like "Riverdance" and that can be built anywhere. But the Abbey is the Abbey, the National Theatre of Ireland, and should stay exactly where it started in Abbey Street.