The excavation of a 17th century theatre was hailed today as a historic event which should be celebrated on the world stage.

For more than 100 years Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin was a thriving venue, with top thespians treading the boards and strong working links with London's Covent Garden.

But as the theatre's popularity waned it was forced to close and take on new guises as a Catholic church and, more recently, an adventure centre.

The curtain was raised again this year on Smock Alley as part of a multi-million euro project to rebuild the performance space on its original site.

During the three-week excavation, which ends today, archaeologists unearthed the theatre's foundations along with a number of key artefacts, including mosaic flooring, discarded oyster shells and wig curlers.

"Today is really a very historic and significant day," Smock Alley's director Patrick Sutton said.

"It's a day for the world to celebrate because it's about finding something absolutely unique, something which dates back to 1662."

"We've chosen to hugely respect the theatre and its value and the very stones that we're standing on. It's a fantastic inheritance to have."

The director of a celebrated 17th-century theatre made an urgent plea today for funding to help raise the curtain on the venue again.

Dublin's Smock Alley Theatre, once a thriving location with strong working links with Covent Garden, is undergoing a multi-million euro makeover to restore it to its former glory.

But project co-ordinators have warned without a rapid injection of cash, the extensive renovation work will be delayed.

"We're about four million short of what we need. We've raised about four and we need another four to bring this project home," Smock Alley director Patrick Sutton said.

"It's about oiling the wheels with money so we can get the project running and we need to do that now -- not in six months, not in eight months, not in a year's time."

Curlers

In August a three-week excavation project unearthed the theatre's 1662 foundations along with a number of key artefacts, including mosaic flooring, discarded oyster shells and wig curlers. Staff hope some of the historical items will go on display in the new venue, which is set to feature a 250-seater theatre and a smaller studio space.

The Smock Alley Theatre Foundation has also been established in the United States to give donors a tax break on any donations they wish to make.

"One euro is welcome and 100 euros are welcome and we're launching a website, smockalleytheatre.com where people can donate online," Mr Sutton said. "It's about asking people to engage in the history of this but also in the future."

In its heyday renowned actors like David Garrick and Spranger Barry took to the Smock Alley stage, with Restoration plays and Shakespearean tragedies pulling in the crowds. As the theatre's popularity waned it was forced to close and take on new guises as a Catholic church and more recently an adventure centre.

Resonance

"Call them spirits, call them ghosts, call them what you will but the atmosphere is alive in here with the resonance of Garrick and Peg Woffington and what they did," Mr Sutton said.

Jeananne Craig

THEATRE As 2009 takes it final bow, critic Emer O'Kelly looks at some of the year's highs and lows

ISAW 83 productions in the course of 2009, the majority of them in Dublin. If evidence were needed of the devastating effect of cutbacks in arts funding, it was clear in the visible reduction in the number of small companies outside the capital having the wherewithal to mount even one production. Several have gone to the wall, and while their artistic standard may have been dubious, it has a demoralising effect overall on the world of the performance arts. And things are only going to get worse, with the Arts Council overall budget suffering even more drastic cutbacks for 2010.

But it's also clear that the Minister for Arts may be signalling a certain level of dissatisfaction with the Council, given the battle he has waged to protect the arts at the Cabinet table, which in other areas has been remarkably successful, against colleagues who, whatever they signal in public, in private regard the arts as peripheral to national requirements at a time of recession.

One of the major events, not just in theatre, but in the cultural life of the country, was the celebration of Brian Friel's 80th birthday, with an emotive, emotional one-night tribute at the Abbey, directed by Patrick Mason, which included a personal homage from Tom Kilroy, and a short season of Friel plays at the Gate, Faith Healer (which will be revived early in the New Year), Afterplay and The Yalta Game.

The Abbey developed its association with Sam Shepard by producing a second specially commissioned work Ages of the Moon, which predictably and deservedly played to capacity business at the Peacock, with Jimmy Fay directing Stephen Rea and Sean McGinley as a pair of curmudgeonly desolate old men going through old-age crisis.

And Patrick Mason returned to the Abbey to direct a wickedly inspired century-crossing version of Sheridan's The Rivals designed by Joe Vanek, and with Marion O'Dwyer giving one of the comedy performances of the decade as Mrs Malaprop.

Indeed, where design was concerned, Vanek had a notable year, since he was also responsible for the haunting open-space set for David Harrower's Knives in Hens at Smock Alley, produced by the determinedly courageous Anne Clarke of Landmark Productions who continually risks the icy blasts as she sheds the shirt off her back. Directed by Alan Gilsenan, it was a serious, haunting, provocative play about intellect, love, savagery and ignorance. It was probably the most satisfying piece of theatre I saw all year.

The Gate scooped two sure-fire commercial winners with the veteran Canadian actor Lou Cariou in Arthur Miller's All My Sons, (which once again proved that Miller's resonant passion for justice has something to say to every generation in every country about the nature of venality and human weakness), and one of our own contemporary bright stars, Conor McPherson, with his adaptation of the Daphne du Maurier story The Birds.

This latter was commercial theatre at its very best, a suspenseful shlock-horror story given a cracking production, directed by the author and with Sinead Cusack and Ciaran Hinds leading the cast, both of them at the top of their very considerable forms.

Another McPherson double act is currently on offer at the Abbey, where his production of his own The Seafarer is the Christmas offering, as off-beat a choice as it is a superb black comedy. Here again one of the performances of the year is a comedy one, with Don Wycherley in particular faultless as a gormless, well-intentioned, chronic drunk.

Outside Dublin, a new production of Tom Murphy's The Gigli Concert was Druid's choice for the reopening of its Druid Lane premises in Galway. It later toured to Cork and transferred to Dublin, and once again, play, author and director (Garry Hynes) scored a notable triumph.

It is one of those truly great plays which grows in your consciousness every time you see it, becoming more relevant to the Irish condition with each year that passes. Denis Conway as the Irishman and Eileen Walsh as Mona were superb, and very nearly matched by Peter Sullivan as JPW King.

Corcadorca staged a mixed media, site-specific production of medEia on the top floor of Cork County Hall, a version of the Euripedes tragedy by Oscar van Woensal, in a superb design by Paul Keogan excellently directed by Pat Kiernan.

Back in Dublin, Rough Magic had a low-key year, but its production of Canadian Michel Tremblay's fascinating piece Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer was a fairly dazzling achievement for director Tom Creed and designer Paul O'Mahony. It followed the Mass form with spoken chorus with the various stages, from Introit through De Profundis to Agnus Dei, exemplified in the lives and losses of a group of sexual derelicts in an apartment house in Quebec. Again, serious, stylish, provocative theatre, splendidly acted.

Anything but provocative, but utterly delightful was the Focus Theatre revival of Bosco Hogan's one-man show on Yeats, I Am of Ireland, adapted from the work by Edward Callan. It had not been seen for nearly a quarter of a century, and looks like developing a new life of its own: deservedly. Hogan is a tour-de-force.

Also well worth mentioning was the Purpleheart production of Patrick Marber's version of Strindberg's Miss Julie, set outside London on election night 1945, an update that worked extremely well under Ronan Leahy's direction with Maeve Fitzgerald as Miss Julie and Stewart Roche as Jean.

During the Dublin Theatre Festival we saw a short run of the co-production between Cheek by Jowl and the Chekhov International Theatre Festival of Three Sisters. Directed by Declan Donnellan in Russian (with surtitles) and designed by Nick Ormerod, it was lucid, exquisite, haunting perfection . . . without a gimmick or a re-interpreted note anywhere. It was by far the highlight of imported theatre in 2009.

One always hopes everything in the theatre will at least be a positive experience, and hopefully even more; but there are always some productions which one would prefer not to have had to sit through. Top of that list in 2009, unfortunately, was the Loose Canon version of Chekhov's The Seagull. Called Anatomy of a Seagull, this "new" version appeared to have little relation to what Chekhov wrote, while its production values and performances were embarrassingly bad almost throughout.

As I wrote at the time, "what has been called Chekhovian characters' 'portentous hunger for life and positiveness' is a starvation diet in this sorry mess".

Equally appalling, although from a company without the track record of Loose Canon, Jouissance Productions' representation of the multi-media Lavender, also in the Fringe Festival, was promoted as a sensual experience. It amounted in the main to video projections of a couple making love in a lavender field, while a man intoned banal mumblings, and a woman encased in a plastic ball waved her arms around before bursting out of it.

Finally, the most-hyped production of the year was also one of the most disappointing (possibly there's a connection.) A stage adaptation by Owen O'Neill and Dave Johns of The Shawshank Redemption, (the Stephen King short story originally called Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption), it had competent if uninspired direction by Peter Sheridan for Lane Productions, and a cast headed by Kevin Anderson and Reg E Cathey.

However, it remained a hamfisted attempt to transpose an iconic film to the stage without allowing for the requirements of an entirely different medium while it also failed to project either the required sense of violence and terror, or indeed any sense of the story's Fifties setting in a maximum security American state penitentiary.

ARCHAEOLOGY IS RARELY used for marketing purposes, but there has been such excitement about the discovery of remnants of Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre that promoter Patrick Sutton is shamelessly employing it as a fund-raising tool to “reinstate” this famous playhouse on its original site, writes FRANK McDONALD Environment Editor

Reinstatement would be impossible, however, as there are three different versions of Smock Alley. The largest and most complete is the shell of SS Michael and John’s Church, where archaeologist Linzi Simpson and her team have unearthed the base walls of two earlier theatres, the oldest dating from 1662.

They have found pieces of mosaic flooring, clay pipes, wig curlers and oyster shells, all testifying to the importance of the theatre in Dublin life, but most importantly the physical evidence showing where the earlier playhouses were located. And Sutton, who is director of the Smock Alley Project, is bowled over by it all.

SMOCK ALLEY WAS only the second theatre to be licensed in Dublin after the restoration of King Charles II (the first was located in Werburgh Street). In one form or another, it continued attracting theatregoers throughout the 18th century – with no less than four separate entrances for different social classes.

All the great actors of the era, including David Garrick and Peg Woffington, performed in Smock Alley, frequently to raucous audiences whose members smoked thin clay pipes, ate lots of oysters and quite possibly threw the shells at actors who incurred their disapproval.

Riots were not uncommon.

“Playgoing in 18th-century Ireland was, at the best of times, a noisy, boisterous contact sport, a public bear pit in which servants, parliamentarians, butchers, Trinity students, haberdashers and ‘ladies of quality’ debated art, sex, politics and fashion,” according to Dr Chris Morash of NUI Maynooth.

In his book, A History of Irish Theatre , 1601-2000 , he brings Smock Alley to life in a series of colourful vignettes that capture the public mood perfectly at different times.

“You could become completely addicted to historical accounts of it in the 18th century – all the duels and the riots,” says archaeologist Linzi Simpson. Amid the damp soil, almost bog-like to walk on because of seepage from the River Liffey, she points to the red-brick wall that survives from the original theatre and how it is bisected by the curved stone wall of the second Smock Alley, forming a curious double-horseshoe shape, all within the shell of the third.

It was this theatre, built in 1735, that later became a mere whiskey store and was acquired for conversion into the first purpose-built Catholic church in Dublin in 1812. Only its facades to Lower Exchange Street on the riverfront and Essex Street West to the rear were altered for church use.

ACCORDING TO SIMPSON , who works with archaeological consultants Margaret Gowen and Co Ltd, the roof was raised to accommodate a very fine Regency Gothic ceiling for the new church.

This was one of the features that conservationists managed to save when the building was converted for the ill-fated Viking Adventure centre. This extravagant project by Temple Bar Properties, costing nearly £6 million (€7.7 million), also incorporated the adjoining boys’ and girls’ schools, west and east of the church, respectively. The Gothic-style boys’ school was hollowed out completely to provide a circulation area between levels of the indoor Viking theme park.

At the time, in the mid-1990s, architects Gilroy McMahon argued that their interventions in the former church and school buildings were “totally reversible” – including the insertion of an intermediate floor that obliterated any sense of the impressive volume of SS Michael and John’s and drew visitors too close to its ceiling.

The gallery of the church was taken out, although pledges were made that it would be salvaged and stored for future use, if required.

Nearly 15 years later, nobody seems to know where it is, or whether any of it still exists. Like so many other elements of old Dublin, about which similar promises were made, it has disappeared.

After Dublin Tourism’s ill-fated Viking Adventure closed in 2002, Temple Bar Properties sought proposals for the complex. The one eventually approved came from Smock Alley Ltd, which proposed reinstating the theatre use – with limited bar facilities – and providing a new premises for the Gaiety School of Acting.

Patrick Sutton, who is also director of the Gaiety School of Acting, says the second phase of his plans for Smock Alley would involve carving out a U-shaped balcony from the concrete intermediate floor inserted in the mid-1990s; the removal of much of this floor would at least reinstate the volume, if not the fabric, of the building.

But the second phase is critically dependent on raising sufficient money – €8 million altogether, of which something over €4 million has been banked so far. This funding gap means that the offensive intermediate floor would be retained in its entirety, with a theatre slotted in underneath as an interim arrangement.

“The plans are to reinstate – for Dublin, Ireland and the world – the Smock Alley Theatre on its original site,” Sutton says. “We’ve tracked the DNA of the building, the heart and soul of what we have here, and fully realise its international significance. But if you ask if we’ll be doing a mock-up, the answer is no – nor should we be.” It can’t, in any case, be a reinstatement of the theatre itself, since there are three versions to choose from and not a single drawing that survives – other than the footprint on John Rocque’s 1756 plot-by-plot map of Dublin, on which it is shown as the Theatre Royal. All that can be reinstated, therefore, is the original use.

‘THIS PLACE HAS no business becoming anything other than what it’s going to become,” Sutton says emphatically. “We’re on a journey here and we’ve had good support, even in the current economic climate.” The Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism has put up €3.8 million, and this has been supplemented by private donors.

“We’re moving forward to complete phase one by the end of 2010, creating a performance space by putting a temporary slab over the archaeological layers,” he explains. In the longer term, assuming more money can be raised, it may be possible to incorporate glazed panels in the floor, through which these layers can be seen.

Just back from the US, Sutton has registered the Smock Alley Foundation in Delaware as a vehicle to raise tax-deductible donations from Irish-Americans who want to “put something back into the homeland”. He says he’ll “go over with a clay pipe, red brick and mosaic from Smock Alley and touch them for it”.

His plans for the former boys’ school is to turn its shell into “potentially one of the finest venues in the country” – certainly, the most unusual. It would be a theatre without any seats; instead, the audience would be standing on the gently-rising ramps, leaning on the guard-rails for support – much like Dublin GAA supporters on Hill 16.

The former girls’ school, which currently houses the Cultivate Centre (which is moving), is to be renovated as a new home for the Gaiety School of Acting – now restyled as the National Theatre School of Ireland – which is currently based in Meeting House Square; sadly, this would remove the square’s only lively weekday use.

Like Harry Crosbie, Sutton believes that people want to be entertained during a recession. He wants to “stir things up”, just as the Sheridan brothers did in the Project Arts Centre during the 1980s. And one of the things he finds so compelling about Smock Alley is that “you can smell the soul of theatre in this place”.

Smock Alley Evolution Of A Building

1662 First Smock Alley Theatre opens on Essex Street West

1670: Original building collapses and is replaced by larger horseshoe-shaped theatre

1735 Third theatre built on the same site

1812 Building converted to SS Michael and John’s Church

1829 Church is the first in Dublin to ring its bells for Catholic Emancipation

1988 Church closed by the Archdiocese of Dublin

1991 Property acquired by Temple Bar Properties (TBP)

1995 Church and its two schools converted to Viking Adventure

2002 Viking Adventure closes

2003 TBP (now Temple Bar Cultural Trust) seeks proposals for use of complex

2005 Proposal by Smock Alley Ltd to convert the church into a theatre and provide premises for Gaiety School of Acting approved

2008 An Bord Pleanála confirms Dublin City Council’s decision to grant planning permission for the proposed development

Smock Alley Theatre: The Evolution of a Building by Linzi Simpson is published by Temple Bar Properties

Part of Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre, dating back to 1662, together with related artefacts, have been uncovered by archaeologists in the Irish city’s Temple Bar area.

The excavations are part of an €8m project to reinstate the theatre on its original site, which has been occupied over the years by a church and, most recently, by a Viking adventure centre. The Department of Arts has provided almost €4m for the restoration and the Gaiety School of Acting, which is promoting the project, hopes to raise the rest through private donations.

The school’s director, Patrick Sutton, said the excavations had uncovered part of the theatre’s original walls as well as stage timbers. Among the artefacts found were an actress’s ceramic wig curler, clay pipes, a broken wine bottle and oyster shells. “Oysters were obviously the popcorn of the day,” he suggested.

Smock Alley, he said, shared productions with Convent Garden. David Garrick was among those who performed at the Dublin venue and the theatre also staged works by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose play, The Rivals, is currently running at the Abbey.

Hollywood star Liam Neeson, a patron of the Gaiety School, has lauded the restoration plan, describing it as inspirational. A foundation is being established in the US to help with funding and it is hoped to have the theatre rebuilt by 2012.

Anthony Garvey

Team unearths relics of former city playhouse

A FASCINATING glimpse into Ireland's theatrical past was unearthed yesterday after excavators found the original walls of an ancient theatre and other artefacts dating back to the 1600s.

Archaeological excavators were stunned to find the original foundations of the former Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin's Temple Bar intact yesterday.

They have been excavating the site -- most recently home to the Viking Adventure Centre on Essex Street -- for the past three weeks as part of an €7.2m project to reinstate the theatre on its original site, known as Smoke Alley when it was built in 1662.

The theatre was the first Dublin playhouse built after the Restoration and was the home of the Theatre Royal up to 1759 after being rebuilt in 1700 and again in 1735.

It was demolished in 1813 to build the Church of St Michael and St John and the site has been vacant for the past few years since the demise of the Viking Adventure Centre. Smock Alley Theatre, in conjunction with the Gaiety School of Acting, received a €3.8m grant from the Department of Arts Sport and Tourism to rebuild the theatre on its original site. The remainder of the funding will come through private donations.

Horseshoe

Smock Alley Theatre director Patrick Sutton said leading archaeologists Margaret Gowan and Lindzi Simpson got more than they bargained for when excavators exposed the walls of the original theatre's horseshoe-shaped ampitheatre as well as the theatres' other incarnations in 1700 and 1735 after digging about two feet down.

"We didn't expect to find the walls of the original three theatres but through this scraping away we unearthed the three lives of the theatres. It's a great day for the country and the world history of theatre," he told the Irish Independent.

"They couldn't even rebuild the Globe on its original site," he said of Shakespeare's London theatre.

They also unearthed some fascinating artefacts including a ceramic curler used by one of the actresses, pieces of the original mosaic floor tiling, a broken wine bottle and oyster shells left behind by theatre patrons who snacked on oysters during performances.

The theatre staged various Shakespearean productions during its lifespan and hosted some of the most renowned playwrights and actors of the day, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his actor-father Thomas Sheridan, Shakepearean actor David Garrick, Thomas Elrington and Joseph Ashbury. It also shared performances with London's Covent Garden.

Hollywood actor Liam Neeson has endorsed the regeneration project as the patron of the Gaiety School of Acting.

"I am particularly excited about this project," he said. "For the school to rebuild a theatre on the site of the original 1662 Smock Alley is inspirational. For it to be a resource for the theatre community as a whole is an added bonus."

The theatre is due for completion by 2012 and will feature the original walls as a backdrop to a modern stage.

Allison Bray

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered artefacts and part of the original Smock Alley theatre (then known as the Smoke Alley theatre) in Dublin’s Temple Bar.

The original Smoke Alley theatre, which dates from 1662, was the first theatre in Dublin to secure a royal patent, issued following Oliver Cromwell’s death. It would have been where English actor and theatre manager David Garrick (1717-1779) staged his version of Hamlet.

The theatre also staged works by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), whose father, Thomas, was the theatre’s manager.

Through connections with Covent Garden in London the theatre thrived and was remodelled a number of times before it was rebuilt in 1735. In later years the site was home to a Catholic church, SS Michael and John’s, and the Dublin Viking Experience.

Sections of the building dating from each period were discovered in the archaeological excavation which is being completed as part of an €8 million plan to reopen the building as a theatre complex, including a main theatre, a studio and rooms for the training of actors.

Commenting on the discoveries yesterday, Patrick Sutton, director of the Gaiety School of Acting and the Smock Alley project, said what had been found was “not only the original walls of the 1662 building but of some of the walls of the later buildings”. He said a mosaic tiled floor uncovered was “as ornamental and beautiful as anything you would see”. Also recovered were timbers from the theatre’s stage, wine bottles and a man’s wig curler.

The discoveries, which form a national monument, are being recorded in situ before being moved to the National Museum. The excavation, which ended yesterday, will be sealed up on Monday, but it is hoped a permanent exhibition will be incorporated in the completed complex.

Mr Sutton paid tribute to the archaeologist Linzi Simpson, who he said had surprised him with the discovery when he returned from America. He also paid tribute to the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, Dublin City Council and the Department of Arts for their help in bringing the €8 million project along. “We have more than half the funding in place and will be setting up a foundation in the States to get the rest, I am confident it will be done,” he said.

TIM O'BRIEN

An archaeological excavation in Dublin has uncovered the foundations of a 17th century theatre and a number of artefacts from theatrical performances.

The excavation, which ends today, is part of a multi-million euro programme to reinstate the Smock Alley Theatre on its original site.

For more than a century from establishment in 1662, Smock Alley - then known as Smoke Alley - put Irish theatre on the European map.

It was the first theatre in Dublin to secure a royal patent, issued following Oliver Cromwell's death, and had close ties with Covent Garden in London, with which acts were shared.

It is now being reinstated on its original site by the River Liffey in the heart of the capital, where an archaeological excavation has just been completed.

Until it closed in 1787 Smock Alley staged premiers by notable Irish playwrights, among them Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his father Thomas. Thespians that performed at the theatre included noted Shakespearean actor David Garrick. On Monday, Smock Alley's original foundations will be sealed and preserved.

The project to re-open the theatre will cost €8m, almost half of which has been raised by a substantial Government grant, and some philanthropic donations.

Story from RTE? News: http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0814/smockalley.html

Temples Bar’s Smock Alley Theatre built in 1662 is to be reinstated to its former glory

Built in 1662 in West Essex Street, Smock Alley put Irish theatre on the map for more than a century. St Michael and John’s Church currently occupies the site of the theatre but the original walls are intact and the basement has remained virtually untouched in the last 400 years. Smock Alley Theatre has been granted permission by An Bord Pleana?la to reinstate the theatre to its former glory with a €7.2million development plan. Patrick Sutton, director of Smock Alley Theatre says it is the most significant thing to happen in theatre in Ireland in a very long time and 'Dublin desperately needs more performance space and rehearsal space’.

Working on the design of the project Architect John O’Keefe says ‘amazingly our design matched the original 1662 layout of the theatre. I am a great believer of architectural fate. The project is funded both by private benefactors and by a grant from the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism and is expected to be completed in 12 months with work to commencing later this year.

THERE used to be a rough crowd at the Smock Alley Theatre in the heart of Dublin.

Prostitutes plied their trade with impunity outside, and when the audiences got hostile, soldiers had to stand guard around the stage.

Now, 400 years after its colourful heyday, the ghost theatre of Temple Bar is due to re-open.

The Smock Alley Theatre, was built in 1662 in Essex Street West. Currently St Michael and John's Church occupies the site of the original theatre. However, the tall imposing walls of the Church are the original walls of Smock Alley Theatre and the basement has remained virtually intact since 1662.

Smock Alley Theatre, which is backing the project, has been given the go-ahead by An Bord Pleanala to proceed with the €7.2m venture.

The development, which will consist of a 220-seat theatre venue and a separate 110-seat studio space, is being financed by private benefactors and a €3.8m grant from the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism. Work will take 12 months to complete and is expected to commence later this year.

"In 1662, Smock Alley Theatre opened its doors. In its day it was the most significant theatre in the world. Smock Alley Theatre has an extraordinary history, it was on the banks of the Liffey and there was sheep and cattle and prostitutes there.

"Bear in mind it was 1662, so all human life was represented. At one stage in its history, in 1712, they had to get soldiers in to protect the actors from the audience," explains Patrick Sutton, who is the driving force behind the project and director of Smock Alley Theatre.

The first play to be performed in the theatre was a laboured comedy called Fletcher's Wit Without Money. A rip roaring success, it was soon followed by a maudlin tearjerker called The Tragedy of Pompey.

In 1662 Shakespeare's Othello was performed in the theatre -- and 60 years before that, the Bard is reputed to have visited the playhouse and frequented some of the many bawdy houses and taverns nearby.

"I am too young to substantiate the Shakespeare rumour. But I can say this, the Smock Alley Theatre is the most significant thing to happen to theatre in Ireland in a very long time.

"Dublin desperately needs more performance space, and rehearsal space too. Both the Government and the private sector have been extraordinarily generous, and they have put up a lot of money," added Mr Sutton.

"Amazingly, our design matched the original 1662 layout of the theatre. Where they had their ticket box and stage coincided exactly with ours. I am a great believer in architectural fate," explains architect John O'Keeffe.

"There is so much of the original building still there. It is frozen history and we want to bring it all back to life,'' he added.

TOM PRENDIVILLE