Gate's Beckett now wows London

"ONE of the finest readings of this comedy of doom," said the Sunday Times. The Gate's production of Happy Days, starring Rosaleen Linehan and Barry McGovern, which wowed New York during the summer, is also receiving a very favourable response at the Almeida Theatre in London, where it opened last week, writes Katie Donovan. Although Robert Hanks of the Independent on Sunday found Rosaleen Linehan as Winnie "too good" - "she modulates perfectly between anxiety and beaming, slightly qualified optimism" - he concluded: "this is the one production I've seen this week - in fact, this year - that left me wanting to go back and see it all again." The Financial Times described the production as "a superb account of a supreme play" while the Observer found it an "infinitely funny, infinitely poignant", "barbed and inflected Irish version" of the play. Michael Billington of The Guardian said: "Linehan, who brings out the Irish speech rhythms inherent in the language, is up there with the best interpreters of the role: she declines from Foxrock matron to panic stricken prisoner without ever suggesting total defeat."

Conor McPherson, still in his mid twenties, will have two plays on the London stage next year. St Nicholas, about a theatre critic who falls in love with an actress, can be seen at the Bush in February, and The Weir (about a group of middle aged men who try to impress a young woman with ghost stories in a rural pub) will be on at the Royal Court later in the year. The prolific McPherson has written the script for the comedy thriller, I Went Down, about two amateur gangsters, which is now in post production. Made here by Treasure Films with backing from the BBC, the Film Board and RTE, it is directed by Paddy Breathnach and stars Brendan Gleeson and Peter MacDonald.

McPherson is also writing a screen version of his play, This Lime Tree Bower, which had a successful run at the Bush Theatre during the summer. "The writing is exhilarating," said Michael Billington in The Guardian, while The Times noted McPherson's "verbal energy, humour, and an eye for both telling detail and the larger picture." The Sunday Times said: "This seductive new play works with a slow burn."

The Project's production of Gerry Stembridge's The Gay Detective, generally acclaimed in Dublin last Feburary, received a rather more mixed reception in the Tricycle in Kilburn. James Christopher in the Times finds the dramatic scenario "decidedly weak", the love story "woefully manipulated" and the whole play "little more than a series of sketchy diversions", though he praises Peter Hanley's lead performance. However, Michael Billington of the Guardian, in a short notice, says that Stembridge "uses fast developing action to make his intellectual points...one is persuaded because one is entertained."