A Better Locksmith: A Journey through Northern Ireland theatre 1984-2025 Author: Jane Coyle ISBN-13: 978-1-0676227-0-1 Publisher: Yellow House PublishingGuideline Price: £30; 220ppNotwithstanding the good work of the Irish Theatre Institute and the digitisation programme carried out by NUIG on the archives of the Abbey and the Gate theatres, the patchiness of the written records of Irish theatre, particularly in the pre-digital last two decades of the 20th century, is dispiriting. David Grant, in his foreword to this book, says as much when he contends that its importance “lies in its first two decades: in the way it captures a picture of work that is at risk of disappearing from view as our understanding of cultural history becomes ever more dependent on artificial intelligence”. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that an art form that is practical and urgent and in hot pursuit of the zeitgeist should, once the show is over, move on without a backward glance. There is good reason, therefore, to give a warm welcome to Jane Coyle’s compendium of her theatre writing from 1984 to the present day. While her role as critic and feature writer across an astonishingly fecund and creative time in the theatre of Northern Ireland is self-evident, her longevity and staying power cements her status as a significant chronicler of two generations of theatre artists and companies from the North in those momentous years. The richly entertaining and incisive reviews and articles reproduced in A Better Locksmith, a fraction of her oeuvre, attest to the pervasiveness of her voice in the telling of the story of Northern theatre over the past 40 years.A Better Locksmith describes the early years of Field Day and the founding of independent companies such as Big Telly, Tinderbox and Prime Cut alongside the continuing story of the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. If Friel, Heaney and trailblazing writers such as Stewart Parker, Graham Reid, Marie Jones and Anne Devlin shine brightly, the lesser gods are not neglected. And if, among the performers, well-known names Adrian Dunbar, Conleth Hill, Stella McCusker, Ian McElhinney, Stephen Rea and Liam Neeson are liberally present, it is the journeymen “theatre makers” who are its heroes and heroines. This is an invaluable addition to the record of Northern theatre, not only an objective and informed voice but a committed and concerned one as well, someone not writing from an academic eyrie but rather in and among the messy uncertain spaces where the stories are dreamt, conjured and told. What shines through is the love and care Coyle has for her subject matter. It’s not often that a theatre practitioner sings the praises of the critic but we are indebted to her for bearing witness and faithfully recording her impressions so that when the set is spirited away late on a Saturday night after the last performance, there is something left in the memory and on the page to remind us, even years after the event, that the empty space was once filled with magic. Ben Barnes is a former artistic director of the Abbey Theatre. His book Side Stage will be published by Martello Press this autumn