THE GATEKEEPERS

July 29th, the Gate Theatre's Beckett Festival will open in New York as part of the Lincoln Festival. During the two week run, the entire Beckett canon of 19 plays will be performed by the Gate Theatre Company of 33 actors. It is, the first time the entire oeuvre has been: staged in this form outside Ireland and it is, a major international achievement. Previously staged at the Gate during the 1991 Dublin Theatre Festival, the Beckett Festival was Michael Colgan's idea, as have been so many of the Gate's successes over the past 15 years.

These include the 1986 production of Juno and the Paycock starring Donal McCann and John Kavanagh; Wilde's Salome, directed by Steven Berkoff in 1988, The Three Sisters in which the Cusack sisters performed with their father, the late Cyril Cusack in 1990, the daring Pinter Festival in May 1994 and that year's premiere production of Molly Sweeney currently in New York, while Hugh Leonard's play of Great Expectations, two months after its opening and still playing to packed houses, has been invited to London's Old Vic in April.

When Colgan was appointed as director in December 1983, the Gate was not in a healthy state. All that has changed. "When I became director, the average annual paying audience was about 25 per cent. In 1983 the Arts Council subsidy accounted for 75 per cent of the Gate's annual income. In 1995, 27 per cent of the Gate's income came from the Arts Council. The remaining 73 per cent was generated through box office, touring and sponsorship."

His energy, ruthlessness, humour, flair, high standards, imagination and ambition have resulted in the theatre's current buoyancy. They are effective qualities and Colgan gets results - which explains why he was asked to be chairman of Dublin's forthcoming all day St Patrick's Day Parade. "The idea is to revamp the existing parade, to make it an all day festival. After all, the 17th of March is our national day. I think it's crazy that the moment when you say, `St Patrick's Day Parade', some people assume you are referring to the one in New York. `How can this be'? There was a time in our history when we seemed to have been asleep; we lost Beckett to France, Joyce to Zurich, and the St Patrick's Day Parade to New York. It is time to take some of these back. And call me simple, but shouldn't the best St Patrick's Day Parade be in Dublin? What would it be like if Bastille Day was known to be celebrated better in Canada than France? Or if the Fourth of July was ignored in America? We have a great board, a great executive in Marie Claire Sweeney and Rupert Murray and great support so far to ensure that the 17th of March is going to be recognised internationally as the date of a great party in Dublin. It is our national day and our hope is that by the year 2000, the world focus will be on Ireland on St Patrick's Day." The new St Patrick's Day Festival will be launched today by the Minister of Tourism and Trade, Enda Kenny at Dublinia, Christchurch.

Interviewing Michael Colgan, impresario and perennial boy wonder, must be like attempting a conversation with US comedian Robin Williams - it is impossible to predict exactly how either of them will respond to even the most banal question. Calculating and shrewd, alternating between manic comedy and poker faced seriousness, Colgan possesses all the verbal speed of a professional comic as well as a repertoire of disconcerting gestures and facial expressions. His cultural references range from Beckett, his hero, to Monty Python and all are delivered with the confidence of one accustomed to engaging his audience, any audience. Nonetheless he stresses the role deputy directors, Marie Rooney and Anne Clarke have played in the Gate's success. "I haven't done this alone."

Engaging in a dialogue with him involves straying into something resembling an impromptu Pinter play or the set of Sleuth. You find yourself wondering if you're on candid camera as the conversation tumbles around courtesy of Colgan's relentless humour and his habit of invariably taking control.

Interviews are artificial and tend to be unsettling experiences. As most of us have never been interviewed, if is difficult to understand that even the most war hardened interviewee is faced with the sudden realisation that it is his or her life coming under public examination.

Above all, there is a certain element of absurdity in formally offering the facts of one's own life to the world at large, particularly when most of those facts have been well chronicled by now. No one is more aware of this than Colgan, a former tour manager of the Irish Theatre Company and later manager and artistic director of the Dublin Theatre Festival, whose sense of irony has always given his serious side a run for its money. "But you already know I'm incredibly handsome, rich, famous, so why are you asking me these questions'? What novel are you reading?"

IT is Monday. A cold, watery morning light plays through the windows of his office across the street from the theatre. It is large, comfortable, an unintimidating environment, yet should he conjure a large gun from thin air, the type that fires bright red flags emblazoned with BANG! in cartoon characters, somehow you wouldn't be too surprised. Colgan is not theatrical, but he is inventive.

There are some pictures, including a large photograph of him with Harold Pinter which is resting on the floor, against the wall. A shifty, slightly dishevelled pair, they look as if they are planning a bank raid or are merely on their way to South America - forever. Lifting it from the floor, he peers at it and says with mock concern: "I'm not sure I like this picture, we seem a bit menacing." The photograph is dismissed. Placed back on the floor, against the same spot of the wall. "Where were we? Oh yes, I was telling you about my Life."

Of his many party pieces is his ability to quote extracts from Beckett's novels. The interviewer has arrived carrying a copy of the Trilogy in the unlikely event of Colgan needing prompting. "I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there," he recites in a hushed, monosyllabic tone from the opening chapter of Molloy, "Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone." He doesn't need the text, although he has his own copy on a nearby shelf. "Have you read any of this stuff," he asks, eyes narrowing, "Are you bluffing?"

At 45 Colgan remains the smartest boy in the class, always owning the last word. His self belief he attributes to his mother Josie encouraging him and Jimmy, his elder brother, in all that they have ever done, while his clever wit was learnt early, as a schoolboy in James's Street Christian Brothers. "It was an amazing class, 18 out of 19 in that class of 68 went on to third level education, two became priests. It was tough. You had to be clever, you had to do well at exams. There was no mercy from the other boys if someone didn't know something. It was a great training in being street wise, in always having a quick reply at the ready.

"Here, I can tell you a great story to give you an example of what it was like. If a lay teacher was out sick, the Christian Brothers often fought to take the class. On one occasion there was a dispute between the Irish teacher and the Latin teacher. The Brother Superior offered a solution by asking us to choose which would you prefer? Brother A or Brother B? A voice came from the back of the classroom `Give us Barabbas.' It's great isn't it. It was like that all the time."

Michael Colgan was born in Dublin in July 1950, the son of an insurance salesman. It was a lower middle class, Catholic background and Colgan's boyhood was very; happy. "We lived off the South Circular Road. I was always very lucky. I did well in exams and sport. I used to run, mainly 100 yards." He quickly became accustomed to coming first at most things. "I was always first. I remember buying a raffle ticket when I was 10. I didn't win. It was the first time I had lost anything. I was shocked. I really was shocked. I still am. I think it was fixed." Stressing his life long luck, he counters it by saying: "Everything has gone well, except the death of my father. That shouldn't have happened. We were very close."

IN a piece celebrating the 400th anniversary of Trinity College in May 1992, he began: "My first impression of Trinity was that it was a place for other people. I remember as a 10 year old boy walking past Front Gate with my father and asking "Can we go in there?" "No", he replied, "we're not allowed." He held my hand a little tighter, and in that, instant I looked beyond the great wooden doors to see an odd figure wearing what looked like a black jockey's cap - further proof of how strange the world was." While it is a lively memoir and certainly evokes his Trinity generation that of the late 1960s and early 1970s - who played poker and debated the future of Players Theatre, it is more valuable for the insight it gives into the close relationship he always enjoyed with his father, Jim. "He had a great, absurd sense of humour, he was a very funny guy and very popular and determined. Roses won't grow around your door unless you plant them he used to say. It was his philosophy that anything you wanted in life you had to work for. He was right."

Jim Colgan was 63 when he died in January 1983. According to Michael's wife, actress Susan Fitzgerald: "I always knew they were very close. They were great pals, they shared the same sense of humour. I was very moved by the extent of the depth of Michael's emotion when Jim died. He has been devastated since his father's death." It does upset him that his father had been dead for almost a year before Colgan began his involvement with the Gate. His family remains very close. "My mother and my brother Jimmy are very important in my life. I often say my brother and I are very close, he lives next door. But he does and we are.

So Colgan the Catholic "gatecrashed" Trinity. "In October 1968 I first went through the wooden doors. Although my home was only three miles away, I was in at foreign country. I remember at first having difficulty with the language - or rather the accent - and I knew nobody. I was alone, probably excommunicated, but was never so excited in my life." An initial interest in psychology - he was studying English, Irish and psychology - was soon overshadowed by Players. While there Colgan also began and ended a brief, undistinguished acting career. Playing a Blackshirt in a production of Max Frisch's Andorra, in which he was required to walk twice across the front of the stage, as if on sentry duty, he soon confirmed that even a non speaking role was beyond him. Luckily for his future career, he had a definite organisational talent and became the first Catholic chairman of the college drama society.

While at Trinity he met Susan Fitzgerald - who could act - and they married in 1975. They have three children and live in Rathgar. A quiet, intelligent woman, Susan Fitzgerald is known to be a strong support to Colgan and is regarded by him as the most important person in my life."

Interestingly, Colgan does not attempt to claim an undying devotion to theatre. "I'm not obsessive about the theatre. I never was. I don't think it would be a good thing if I was, I wouldn't be as objective. You need to be objective to balance your judgement. It's no good gushing that everything is brilliant when it's often not. I often refer to the current movement, as the Theatre of Disappointment." His real obsession is chamber music, particularly Schubert and Faure. I already have my tickets for Mitsuko Uchida's concert at the National Concert Hall in February. The risk of disappointment at a concert, or even at a movie is less. But, when theatre does work, the memory of it lives longer than that of any concert or movie." As well as a specialist interest in music, he has always been an avid and opinionated reader of contemporary fiction. If Colgan likes a novel, he wants everyone to read it.

For all the running gags, Colgan has strong views about theatre in Ireland. Aware that it remains essentially a writer's theatre, he applauds the supremacy of the writer but feels it is a traditional position that should not be held at the expense of everyone else involved. "Often commentators will praise a bad production of a new play, while ignoring a great production of a classic. Long may the writer reign, but we must soon turn our attention to the lack of, training and the dearth of good directors and designers in this country.",

Acknowledging that Irish cinema is currently entering a new age, "and this is great", he also cautions the potential strain this new surge will place on the availability of actors for theatre work as well as the possible vocal inability of future generations of movie actors to deal with stage techniques.

With the dearth of technical training in mind, the Gate has embarked on a policy of training, whereby a voice coach will be assigned to each production and a mentor system whereby most productions will have an assistant director. "There's no shortage of ideas in Irish Theatre, but it is often difficult to find the right people to realise them."