1966 – Abbey Theatre, Abbey Street, Dublin

The Abbey Theatre was founded in 1904 as the Irish National Theatre Company. After purchasing the Mechanics Institute on Marlborough Street, they refitted it as the Abbey Theatre. On the night of the 17-18 July 1952, the Abbey was badly damaged by fire and a replacement building was designed by Michael Scott and Partners (Scott was himself a former Abbey actor) on a larger site on Abbey Street. It finally opened in 1966, fifteen years to the day after the old Abbey Theatre had been destroyed by fire.

Scott utilised as consultant Pierre Sonrel (1903-84), a French architect who specialised in theatre design. In the interim, the Abbey Players used the Queen’s Theatre on Pearse Street.

During the planning stages, Scott and the Abbey tried to persuade neighbouring properties to sell out but to no avail. With an eye to any future extension, the rear wall of the stage was designed to be easily demolished to allow for a bigger stage area if they could acquire a neighbouring building. The result is tight box of a theatre which has had complaints from actors and management almost since it opened. In a 1966 interview with RTE, Scott tried to justify every design decision and said that “I think primarily for sentimental reasons that the directors thought that it was proper and right to build on the site of the old theatre” but later admitted that the site gave certain limitations.

“Well, I think that we have produced a theatre that is intimate, which is efficient, which gives considerable flexibility for productions.”

“Well, there was really no restrictions imposed by the management but the decision to use the old site gave certain limitations and it’s inevitable that in a central area that you have limitations on any building I the centre of the city. And these limitations are a challenge to an architect to overcome them and to get the best possible solutions from every point of view, plan-wise and from an elevational treatment. I mean, it is on a corner of a Dublin street, its height is kept to the same height as the brick buildings beside it, so the scale is kept in scale with the street architecture, and this is important.
Michael Scott in Interview on RTE ‘Late Extra’ presented by Patrick Gallagher, 18 July 1966.

A later extension to Marlborough Street in 1990 by McCullough Mulvin extended the bar area to overlook the street and create a portico for the front.