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Sat 10 Oct 2010The Wilde spirit that speaks the language of modern theatre
CULTURE SHOCK:TEN YEARS AGO, for his Beckett on Film series, Michael Colgan, the artistic director of the Gate Theatre in Dublin, created a combination that now seems extraordinarily resonant.
He had David Mamet directing Harold Pinter in Samuel Beckett’s Catastrophe. It was a unique line-up of three of the stellar figures in the constellation of 20th-century theatre. And as Colgan points out in a programme note for his BPM – Beckett Pinter Mamet – mini-festival at the Gate, the grouping is not accidental. Pinter always sent his new scripts to Beckett for criticism or approval, while Mamet generally sent his to Pinter. There are few chains of influence in contemporary literature that are so clear and strong.
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