The Gate Theatre, Dublin

Inspiration and Craft

Dan Farrelly, David Clare, Des Lally, Patrick Lonergan, David Clare, Des Lally, Patrick Lonergan

• Publisher: Peter Lang Group
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781788746243
• eBook ISBN: 9781788746250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

The Gate Theatre is one of Ireland's major theatres. It has produced important new plays by such figures as Brian Friel, Conor McPherson, and Denis Johnston – while also premiering significant works by other writers, including unjustly neglected women dramatists such as Mary Manning, Christine Longford, and Maura Laverty. It has made huge contributions to the art of theatre in Ireland, not only in relation to acting (launching the careers of Orson Welles, James Mason, and Michael Gambon) but also in terms of direction and design. And it has made a major contribution to the world's understanding of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and others.

Despite these incredible achievements, the theatre has been the subject of very little critical attention to date. This book redresses this problem; it is, in fact, the very first scholarly essay collection devoted entirely to the theatre. It gathers together leading academics and critics who explore the Gate's achievements in relation to the development of new Irish writing and new Irish theatre practices. The book is written with scholarly rigour but also in accessible language and would therefore be of interest to anyone with a passion for Irish theatre.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Introduction (David Clare / Des Lally / Patrick Lonergan)
• 1 Experiment and The Free State: Mrs Cogley’s Cabaret and the Founding of the Gate Theatre 1924–1930 (Elaine Sisson)
• 2 Hilton Edwards as Director: Shade of Modernity (Ian R. Walsh)
• 3 ‘Ancient Ireland comes to Rathmines’: Memory, Identity, and Diversity in Micheál macLíammóir’s Where Stars Walk (1940) (Ruud van den Beuken)
• 4 Micheál macLíammóir: The Erotic-Exotic and the Dublin Gate Theatre (Richard Pine)
• 5 Desperationists and Ineffectuals: Mary Manning’s Gate Plays of the 1930s (José Lanters)
• 6 Denis Johnston at the Gate: a Groundbreaking yet Neglected Writer (Virginie Girel-Pietka)
• 7 Magic Windows: Ria Mooney at the Gate Theatre (Ciara O’Dowd)
• 8 Lord Longford’s Yahoo: An Alternative National Myth from an Alternative National Theatre (Feargal Whelan)
• 9 Class, Land, and Irishness: Winners and Losers: Christine Longford (1900–1980) (Cathy Leeney)
• 10 Longford Productions, Bernard Shaw, and the Irish Big House (Audrey McNamara)
• 11 The Fictionalisation of Hilton Edwards and Micheál macLíammóir in the Novel Stravaganza! (1963), by Paul Smith (Des Lally)
• 12 Brian Friel at the Gate: Lovers in Dublin and New York (Anthony Roche)
• 13 ‘Our only thorough playwright’: Oscar Wilde and the Gate Theatre (Noreen Doody)
• 14 Goldsmith, the Gate, and the ‘Hibernicising’ of Anglo-Irish Plays (David Clare)
• 15 Staging American Drama at the Gate Theatre, 1928–2016 (Christopher Murray)
• 16 ‘Staging an encounter’: Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, Bracha Ettinger, and the Art-Encounter-Event (Graham Price)
• 17 ‘Be again, be again’: The Gate’s Beckett Country (Trish McTighe)
• 18 The Gate, Endgame, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Aoife Lynch)
• 19 Harold Pinter at the Gate Theatre: ‘A Kind of Homecoming’ (Emma Creedon)
• Appendix A: Gate Theatre Chronology (1928–1982): The Edwards-macLíammóir and Longford Directorates (Des Lally / David Clare / Ruud van den Beuken)
• Appendix B: Gate Theatre Chronology (1983–2017): The Michael Colgan Directorate and the Appointment of Selina Cartmell (David Clare)
• Notes on Contributors
• Index