Rita, a Pat emphatically states, is the productions protagonist, therefore shifting the focus away from the political and over to the personal. However, any accusations that the production veers into the realms of intrusion on someone's personal lives, through its mix of the real, the public, the political and the fictional, are dismissed by Talbot.

"The play is fiction. The title is Rita Dunne. Not Miriam Ahearn. Are their similarities in the story? I'm sure there are. But I do not know Miriam Ahearn personally. I do not know Bertie Ahearn personally. Of course there will be accusations of 'intrusion' but then I Keano could be deemed intrusive of Roy Keane and Mick McCarthy and most of the Irish team of that time. Oliver Stone could be accused of colossal intrusiveness on the family of Richard Nixon with Nixon, or likewise JFK and the forthcoming Bush. What Rita Dunne attempts to do is to give a voice to a constituency of people behind the scenes who are circumstantially forced to shoulder an extraordinary burden. Dublin audiences have certainly responded to this dimension of the story."

Whatever criticism Rita Dunne may attract, the productions chief aim, where Talbot was concerned at least, was that it attempt to inject some current affairs into Irish theatre. And in that regard he has succeeded – spurred on by the recent emergence in Britain of plays dealing with trials and coupled with the seemingly unending drama of our own Tribunals here, Pat has taken a rare dip in largely untested waters.

"British theatre is way ahead of Irish theatre in this regard," he says referring to the lack of current political theatre here. "The emergence of 'verbatim' theatre in the last ten years, particularly the Tricycle Theatre's plays dealing the trial of Stephen Lawrence and the Bloody Sunday enquiry, the National Theatre's production of Stuff Happens by David Hare, chronicling the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, these works have transformed the perception of theatre, especially with younger audiences, and given theatre a journalistic immediacy and vitality that can be lacking from a lot of Irish theatre.

"With the honourable exception of the work of writers like Paul Mercier and Donal O Kelly, Irish theatre can be very slow in responding to the massive changes in our society. For instance we have a new dispensation in Northern Ireland since 1998 and we have had no theatrical event, that I'm aware of, addressing it. Rita Dunne is a personal story first and formost, but it is framed by ongoing political controversies which do anchor it in the 'now' I believe."

The production, it seems fair to say, is also, in some ways, a commentary on the role that the media plays in politics and how they are integral in contributing to the elevation of such political scandals into the spectacles they now resemble? Pat agrees, saying, "Yes the tribunal process is a compelling form of theatre in itself. The coverage of them, which a lot of the time has been at saturation levels, has been very invasive of everyday ordinary lives, given that public discourse is largely shaped and defined by the media response to events. But I believe this to be a good thing because accountability is a crucial part of any democracy."

Rita Dunne is currently running at the Everyman Palace Theatre until Saturday, August 2.

Comments (0) »

Show/Hide comment form

Name

Email

Title

Comment

Write the displayed characters

Add Comment