Leading Article: Abbey life; THEATRE.(Comment) From: The Independent (London, England) | Date: July 27, 2005 | COPYRIGHT 2005 Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

It is a thousand pities that Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Ireland's national theatre and one of its prime cultural assets, should now find itself mired in financial crisis and internal turmoil.

The Abbey's very name conjures the famous shades of Ireland's literary history: William Butler Yeats stalked the place. It staged plays by John Millington Synge, Brendan Behan, and Sean O'Casey. Some of these changed, or at least helped to define, Ireland. When O'Casey's The Playboy of...