LAURENCE FOSTER'S memoir . . . subtitled 'The Life and Times of an English Actor in Ireland' . . .offers a window into a scabrous and doughtily recollected era of Irish theatre beginning in 1968 which ought to appeal to the factual reader and to those of a more theatrical bent.

Foster's florid, lyrical and discursively dramatic narrative begins with his arrival in Dublin as a 24-year-old English midlands repertory actor who sets off to Castlebar where he joins with the Anew McMaster Memorial Theatre Company, then being produced by Dick Condon, to act in the plays 'Billy Liar', 'Boeing-Boeing', 'Murder Without Crime', 'The Heiress' and 'Washington Square'.

He returns some months later to Dublin and the destitute prospect of "resting" before a chance meeting at Neary's with Maureen Potter facilitates the short trot across Tangier Lane and a sidestep into the Gaeity where he sings a song for Fred O'Donovan and . . . though he is somewhat deflatingly told he is "no Cliff Richard"- gets a part in the Christmas Pantomime, 'Tom Thumb'.

After March 1969 he is once again resting but is by this time tentatively, erroneously, established as the only English actor working in Dublin.

Such is the opening of Foster's anecdotal recollection of a histrionic and often technical/administrative career in Irish drama. His chronological account is appropriate to his aim and he writes his memoir in an often declamatory style.

'Rising Without Trace' cheers its readership through its facility with describing location and through thumb-nailing the faded luminaries of a practically bygone era. It's the biography of an enduring soul; a professional who not everybody will have heard of let alone have seen perform. It might have benefited from judicious pruning of syntax . . . but is nonetheless a fine addition to a fascinating literary history.