Abbey Theatre
CONGRATULATIONS TO the board of the €8.5m per annum Abbey Theatre, which pulled off quite the media coup in light of some damning findings in a corporate governance review carried out by Crowe-Ireland (CI). A summary of 12 findings was released last week and the meeja has kept to the script.
The Abbey press release announcing the publication of the CI summary opened with the statement: “The board and the co-directors of the Abbey Theatre today welcome the completion of the independent review into governance arrangements and policies at the theatre.”
As the report is understood to have been delivered almost nine months ago, Goldhawk asked the Abbey when it received it but was told only that the report was “approved by the board in June”.
However long the review was sitting in Lr Abbey Street, the period allowed the board of the national theatre to set about filling in some of the numerous governance gaps that had been identified at the theatre. As a result, alongside the summary of the CI report was another report, “Actions as already taken by the Abbey Theatre”, as well as an outline of actions that have already been agreed with the paymasters in the Arts Council.
While the theatre may have been operating in an utterly dysfunctional manner for a number of years, it is clearly at the top of the class when it comes to the art of spin. Indeed, the Irish Times followed up on the report with an article headlined: “Palpable sense of relief and positivity at Abbey Theatre following publication of report”.
The CI review was not actually the result of the protected disclosure made to arts minister Catherine Martin by the Abbey’s former co-directors, Graham McLaren and Neil Murray, on foot of the €1m debacle surrounding their bungled exit from the theatre. Instead, the minister opted to rely on the CI report commissioned by the Abbey itself at a time when it was under huge pressure from the Arts Council to account for the expensive off-stage farce first revealed by Goldhawk (see The Phoenix 5/11/21).
As fans of The Phoenix will be aware, the starring role was played by Abbey Theatre chairwoman since 2017 Frances Ruane. She exited the Abbey just four weeks ago, with the IT helpfully noting the chair had been pushing for publication for the last few months and “always, her impulse was that whatever was found was made available”.
Nevertheless, there is rather a lot left behind the curtain. Moreover, there appears to have been absolutely no consequences as a result of this six-figure theatrical flop, which even featured scenes in which the board failed to adhere to its own constitution and also failed to follow legal advice about the ballsed-up ‘redundancy’ process associated with McLaren and Murray. Nor is it clear if the Arts Council has yet released the rest of the funding it withheld last year.
Given the easy ride the Abbey Theatre directors, past and present, have got in the media, it is no wonder there is a “palpable sense of relief” at the Abbey.
