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Article: Ben Barnes, Plays and Controversies. Abbey Theatre Diaries 2000-2005.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Irish University Review: a journal of Irish Studies
- Article date:
- March 22, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Irish University Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Ben Barnes, Plays and Controversies. Abbey Theatre Diaries 2000-2005. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2008. 459 pages. EUR 35.00 (paperback).
National Theatres are not for the faint-hearted. As institutions they thrive, and often founder, on conflict, if only because they tend to embody a perpetual tension between the claims of tradition and the individual enterprises of imagination. Peter Hall, sometime artistic director of the British National Theatre, subtitled his diaries 'the story of a dramatic battle', a description which this book also summons, given its astonishing chronicle of triumph and disaster at the heart of the Irish theatre at the beginning of the ...