Suite and low

Joe O’Byrne has written a pretty lengthy and extensive spiel which he will more than happily read when asked what his new play is all about. But when pushed on the subject, prompted to sum up the theme of En Suite in just one word, he replies: “Sex”. Sounds interesting enough, Joe, so why not give us your full length synopsis of En Suite?

“It’s here on my computer,” he says, speaking on the phone from his home. “OK, what I say is, ‘Evelyn Dryer runs a successful Bed and Breakfast in her madcap way with little or no help from her two grown up daughters, Ella and Emer. And her’s is no ordinary family. A guest looking in would find one daughter about to have a baby from a long departed Italian tourist, and the other indulging in prayer and lesbian love. And there is no husband in sight, the husband long gone on his fornicating way. Evelyn buzzes about, trying to keep the business going, at the same time doing her best to hide her worries about the fate of her

daughters. And so life goes on until one day Evelyn’s brother, Owen, arrives home from Las Vegas. He is home to die, of an

inoperable brain tumour and has arrived penniless and alone. But before he dies, there is an old secret he wants dusted down, a skeleton he wants brought out of the

cupboard. All of which is too much for Evelyn and threatens to tip her over the edge...”

Now that sounds like a cheery evening at the theatre!

“It actually is a comedy!” O’Byrne continues, laughing. “A black comedy. Though it has its shadows and is quite dark in parts, it’s also quite zany, as a piece. Fawlty Towers would be an influence on it. That kind of black farce. But it is fundamentally about sex, lies and secrets.”

It’s also set in a B&B, the kind of

establishment that Joe O’Byrne, as a writer/director and one time Artistic Director of the CoMotion Theatre Company, knows damn well all about. Given that staying in bed and breakfasts rather than hotels is usually the only option open to relatively

impoverished touring theatre companies.

“Unless you’re the Abbey!” jokes Joe, adding, more seriously, “but then they’re not doing any touring at all this year. Because of financial reasons.”

Does this affect O’Byrne himself? Were there plans to tour En Suite with the Abbey?

“Not that I know of, so this doesn’t directly affect me. But it does deprive the country of any Abbey touring shows. They got a repeat grant from last year, from the Arts Council, and it just wasn’t enough.”

This clearly is a subject that Joe feels

passionately about. Particularly given that in his time as Artistic Director of CoMotion he finally folded that theatre company because of a lack of funding.

“There has been a level of improvement in terms of increases to the Arts Council but, in actual money feeding down to theatre companies and so on, the increases haven’t been great,” he says.

“And I did get fed up dealing with the Arts Council, trying to cope with lack of funding. So, at a certain point, you just say, ‘This is not worthwhile.’ Every company, at some point, goes through that kind of crisis and must decide whether to continue or fold.”

And so, surely, does every playwright. Yet Joe O’Byrne insists that despite the financial uncertainties involved in working in theatre, all such concerns must take second place – if not disappear – when you are actually

planning and writing a play. “If your purpose is pure you cannot be waylaid by thinking things like, ‘I better write a hit’ or, ‘I better write something commercial’. That’s not the way of the true playwright,” he believes.

“I still enjoy writing,” he asserts. “And you can’t allow issues like funding and finances to affect the writing. On one hand you always hope you get the play staged and send it out and hope someone says ‘yeah’ but you don’t start off with the intention of writing a hit. At least I don’t.

“In this sense, I feel lucky to be under the wing of the Abbey in the sense that they are producing En Suite at the Peacock. Even that is a major plus these days. And you just hope it is a success.”

En Suite is at the Peacock, Dublin from Wednesday, March 20th