Allowing a national treasure to crumble.

last updated 8 January 2015

Ireland

Emer O’Kelly

We Irish are reputed to cherish our national culture, said Emer O’Kelly in Dublin’s Sunday Independent. Indeed, we sing songs about the famed Abbey Theatre, founded in 1903 by our own W.B. Yeats, and we proudly quote whole passages from the Irish plays that premiered there. Yet we can’t get it together to restore the actual structure. The original theater burned down in 1951 and was rebuilt—poorly—on the same site. The new building was less than glorious. It had “lousy acoustics with several spots where you heard almost nothing,” as well as “woefully inadequate technical facilities.” That’s why theatergoers rejoiced when the government in 2000 announced a thorough renovation. Seven years later, all we’ve accomplished is ripping out the entire interior. It turned out the government couldn’t afford to buy neighboring lots for the expansion, and the Arts Ministry began looking at sites way out of the city center. As purists bickered with realists, prices continued to rise—and we still have no site. “We have talked ourselves hoarse and consulted ourselves to death because we’re such a ‘culturally aware’ nation.” What we ought to be is “a culturally active nation: as in building the damn thing.”