An Awfully Big Adventure, 1995
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
Dublin: flights to Dublin Airport
The Olympia Theatre, 72 Dame Street (tel: 677.7744), near the Temple Bar district.
Bewley's Oriental Café, 78-79 Grafton Street
Camden De Luxe Hotel, 84-87 Lower Camden Street (tel: 353.1.4780808)
Trivia
Director Mike Newell went on to direct Al Pacino and Johnny Depp in Donnie Brasco.
An Awfully Big Adventure location: The ‘Liverpool’ playhouse: Olympia Theatre, Dame Street, Dublin
Full marks to Hugh Grant, risking his newly-acquired star status after the phenomenal success of Four Weddings and a Funeral by playing the seedily manipulative gay theatre director in Mike Newell’s film of Beryl Bainbridge’s backstage tragedy.
Set in Liverpool during the Forties, the movie was filmed, apart from a couple of establishing shots of the Mersey, in Dublin as, once again, the Irish government scored with the tax breaks.
The ‘Playhouse’ is actually the beautiful 1,300 seat Victorian Olympia Theatre, 72 Dame Street, near the Temple Bar district.
An Awfully Big Adventure location: Gossip in the tea-room: Bewley’s Oriental Café, 78-79 Grafton Street, Dublin
Not far away is another Dublin institution, the tea-room where members of the company swap gossip. It’s Bewley’s Oriental Café, 78-79 Grafton Street.
Dublin Docks stand in for Liverpool’s Merseyside equivalent, where grand actor PL O'Hara (Alan Rickman) rides his motorbike.
The theatre’s rehearsal space might look familiar – it’s the same ornate, arched rehearsal room, above a snooker hall, used by the band in Alan Parker’s The Commitments. It was Ricardo's; it's now been restored, to become the Camden De Luxe Hotel, 84-87 Lower Camden Street.
