Gates of Gold

Library Theatre, Manchester

24 March 2009

Anyone who enjoyed Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me at the Library Theatre in 2007 will be eager to see their new production of his 2003 play, Gates of Gold.

The story is inspired by Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards, fabled actors turned writer-producer-directors who founded the Gate Theatre in Dublin.  Despite their apparently impeccable Celtic credentials, both were Londoners by birth – a fact they went to some lengths to deny.  Yet strangely, considering the moral tenor of the times, they made no secret of their homosexual relationship, remaining linked personally and professionally until MacLiammóir’s death in 1978.

It’s the dramatic potential of a drawn-out and painful deathbed that provides the setting for Gates of Gold.  Gabriel, a narcissistic drama queen in an unconvincing wig, is expiring loudly and complainingly of bowel cancer and a weak heart.  Having driven away innumerable carers with a sharp tongue and unreasonable behaviour, his cool and phlegmatic partner Conrad manages to engage the no-nonsense nurse Alma.  But although things improve, Gabriel isn’t willing to go gentle into that good night – and he’s even more agitated when the vultures begin gathering in the shape of his equally eccentric sister Kassie and her sinister son Ryan.

For those who found Brian Friel’s Faith Healer a little mysterious and ambiguous – well, that was child’s play compared with a piece in which all of the characters are lying all of the time, so you’re never sure of anything at any given point, and just when you think you’ve managed to grasp the facts something is revealed which changes your perspective on everything yet again.  Nevertheless, even while in a state of perplexity and bamboozlement, it is possible to admire and enjoy this high-class production by director Rachel O’Riordan.

Oliver Cotton as the dying man leaves us in no doubt that in his prime Gabriel was a charismatic, flamboyant, exotic creature who richly merited his own high opinion.  Even though now stranded breathless in bed, his wit and banter remain undiminished.

Ian Barritt’s placid and initially unsympathetic Conrad (bearing an uncanny physical resemblance to Hilton Edwards) is the stiff-upper-lipped Englishman to Gabriel’s Colleen Bawn, but his gradual suggestion of hidden depths and suppressed passions is fascinating.  When they share their bed and reminisce, Gabriel with his palliative morphine and Conrad casually smoking a pipe of heroin, they’re like an old married couple who are still in love.

Diego Pitarch’s design has to allow for the counterpointed dialogue between some scenes, and does a great job of fitting a bedroom, hall and living room simultaneously onto the Library’s modest stage, while James Whiteside’s lighting draws the play to a memorable and moving conclusion.

Frank McGuinness calls Gates of Gold a love story, which it undoubtedly is, but he could equally have billed it as a detective story with an unfathomable ending.

Gates of Gold is on until Saturday 11 April 2009

Prices: £9.80-£18.10 (conc from £7.35)

Times: Mon-Thurs @ 7.30; Fri & Sat @ 8pm; matinees Thurs & Sat @ 3pm

Box Office: 0161 236 7110

www.librarytheatre.com