At the end there’s the same stage picture only this time the stiff is that first senator’s son Cal played by the

At the end, there’s the same stage picture, only this time the stiff is that first senator’s son, Cal (played by the talented, Hugh Grant-lookalike John Barrowman), who has died because, as state governor, he’s taken on the Mafia in a drugs-busting programme.In between, we see how Cal’s cartoonily ambitious Rose-Kennedy-meets- Lady Macbeth monster mother, Violet (Kathryn Evans), and his not-just- literally twisted and crippled gay uncle (a splendid Philip Quast) package the reluctant boy for a political career. Where the musical eclecticism of Assassins makes the dramatic point that all the characters are trapped in one or other form of national costume, in The Fix it mainly serves to advertise Mr Rowe’s ability to write blandly in several styles.The proceedings begin with a suited chorus clustered around the flag- draped coffin of a senator who has died in flagrante with a receptionist. The Sondheim takes material that it is potentially offensive to put into this genre and then disarms criticism with a biting demonstration that, far from being incongruous figures in a Broadway show, these twisted loners and thwarted idealists represent the parodic embodiment of the American musical’s self-assertive values.
There’s no equivalent irony in The Fix, which aims at very broad and battered targets (the amorality of the political machine; the obsession with image over substance; the links between politicians and the Mafia; the remorseless dynastic mill) and which justifies itself as a musical on the undeniable, but scarcely thought-provoking, grounds that politicans are natural showfolk.Hence a score which, while basically rock-driven, is free to nod in any direction – macabre Vaudeville number; rousing clap-happy gospel; country ‘n’ western ballad, and so on. Sam Mendes began his reign at the Donmar Warehouse directing the British premiere of Assassins, Sondheim’s musical take on the motivation of that rag-bag of people who have pointed guns at US presidents.

He returns to American politics now with The Fix, a new musical – by unknowns, John Dempsey and Dana P Rowe – that traces the rise and fall of a young would- be senator, Cal Chandler, the scion of a dynasty not entirely distinct from the Kennedys

The contrast between the two shows is instructive. You see it again and again, so many bloody lonely writers, but it doesn’t have to be such a lonely task…” He sighs: “but you have to be dandy on your feet at the same time”n ‘Prayers of Sherkin’ opens on Monday at the Old Vic, London SE1 (Booking: 0171-928 7616). If you look at some writers, you get a sense of people abandoning everything in order to concentrate – Jesus, it’s horrific. Certainly my own father, who seemed to feel there was no Irish history before 1950.”After a while, the future, in the form of his own unruly babas, erupted on to the scene, sending the two dogs and the Cartoon Channel into hyperdrive. Back-chatting easily with their cheek and curiosity – they’ve impudently picked up his taste for playing with well-worn phrases, as though constantly trying to wring new irony from them – he abstractedly whiled away the time with them, as his wife and mother traded conversation in the kitchen.”I couldn’t do it,” he admits, fielding a baby-shoe encrusted with dogshit, “unless I had an impossible licence from my family I have a single-mindedness which borders on the criminal. But it mirrors the 10 years Ali and I have been together, and the plays are a flustered attempt to create a sense of family, because my own family wasn’t interested in the past.

The subject: “God bless him, a great-uncle of mine who disappeared after the Civil War, no doubt for good reason. It’s all totally invented, because he didn’t leave any trace, a glorious blank canvas for whatever it is, a dreamworld.” Also belted down is a new play, Our Lady of Sligo, about his mother’s mother – again commissioned by Max Stafford-Clark’s company, Out of Joint, (which toured The Steward), featuring Sinead Cusack.In the meantime, he happily pats the Methuen book of his past five plays, re-combing strands of his past “Ten years in 301 pages, it’s frightening. It was monumentally confusing.”Barry still stands by the play – preferably as a simpler, 90-minute piece – but has long since moved on. He has just completed his first novel in 10 years, The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty – already bought by Picador and sold on to Germany, Holland and Viking-Penguin in the US.

It all happened three weeks after The Steward reopened in London, so the contrast really called upon my deeper reserves. Mind you, it hasn’t been entirely plain sailing since in his home town. Another play, The Only True History of Lizzie Finn, written back-to-back with The Steward, but premiered later on the Abbey mainstage, was howled down by critics “It was a penitential experience. For him, there was the Sartrean, existentialist stuff going round Dublin.