Gate production of Pinter plays receives rave Broadway reviews

Dublin's Gate Theatre has received ecstatic reviews for its contribution to the Harold Pinter Festival in New York. Three Gate productions of plays by the English playwright have been performed already while a fourth, Landscape, opens tomorrow night.

The theatre's staging of The Homecoming, performed in Dublin last month, was described by the New York Times critic Ben Brantley as "electrifying" and "superlative".

He said the six-member cast, which includes John Kavanagh and Ian Holm, was "dazzlingly in sync" and commented: "It is hard to imagine the Harold Pinter Festival at Lincoln Centre topping this superlative production from the Gate Theatre . . . This is one of those uncommon revivals of a classic that gives you something like the same goose bumps it must have inspired when it opened."

Linda Winer, of Newsday, described the production as "riveting", while Donald Lyons, of the New York Post, said: "This Irish staging, stressing the stylised strangeness of it all, is light years ahead of the humourless versions of the past."

The Homecoming, which is directed by Robin Lefevre, is one of nine Pinter plays being staged at the festival.

The two one-act plays, A Kind of Alaska and One For The Road, were performed together on four nights last week. Of Mr Lefevre's direction of One For The Road, Charles Isherwood, writing in Variety, said it was "crisp and chilling".

He said the portrayal, by Penelope Wilton, of Deborah in A Kind of Alaska, was "simply extraordinary" and "heart-rending to watch".

The Pinter Festival, which is curated by the director of the Gate, Mr Michael Colgan, is one of six festivals within the Lincoln Centre Festival 2001. Besides the theatre element, there are festivals of opera, dance and music.

Ms Marie Rooney, spokeswoman for the Gate, said the reviews were "overwhelming". "We are all absolutely on a high," she said.

Asked about the dispute between the theatre and the Arts Council, and whether the positive reviews might seem to vindicate Mr Colgan's assertion that the council was wrong to describe the Gate as "neither adventurous nor ground-breaking", Ms Rooney replied: "I think the reviews speak for themselves."