`The Gate'

I have been spending a very pleasant hour, an hour full of memories, looking over the Gate Theatre's new brochure

I have been spending a very pleasant hour, an hour full of memories, looking over the Gate Theatre's new brochure. Miss Toska Bissing was good enough to send me a copy a full fortnight ago, but it barely had appeared on my desk before it was whipped away by some colleague without conscience. Remorse, however, seems to have been at work upon him, because it re-appeared in an equally mysterious fashion yesterday.

Who ever would have thought that the Edwards-MacLiammoir combination have been working here in Dublin for twelve years. It seems to me only yesterday that I took part in a conversation with Daisy Bannard Cogley and Gearoid O Lochlainn on the subject of these two young men who had ideas about starting a permanent repertory theatre in Dublin. That same night, I remember, Hilton Edwards was one of the performers at Madame Cogley's cabaret in Harcourt street, and within a week or two the notice-boards outside the Peacock Theatre were announcing "Peer Gynt."

They have played "Peer Gynt" on larger stages since then - at their own theatre and at the Gaiety - but to me it has not been quite the same. That first night was a new experience in every possible sense of the word.

The Irish Times, March 29th, 1940.