In the last decade there has been, under Patrick Mason’s leadership as artistic director, a period of radical transformation and renewal at the Abbey. In 1995 Neil Wallace wrote, in an overview of theatre in Ireland for a report commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland, that ‘ the society is lucky to have one of the most talented stage directors in the English-language theatre at its head’. In a community such as the theatre one, which is characterized by a more than usual quotient of begrudgery, this view would, on the whole, be widely shared.