Sir, – Barry Houlihan is incorrect in stating that the Pike Theatre Club in Dublin gave the first English-language staging of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot ("A theatre of memory: performing modern Ireland", August 31st).
I well remember the disappointment of Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift, the Pike’s founders, when they learned that the English-language rights were held by the British producers Donald Albery and Peter Glenville, who subsequently presented the play at the Arts Theatre in London.
The Pike management had assumed that the Irish rights were separate from the British. After sympathetic intervention from the author, the Pike production was given leave to open one week after the London production. However, Irish audiences had the advantage of hearing the complete text of the play because the Lord Chamberlain had required cuts of words that his office deemed to be immoral or obscene.
– Yours, etc,
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CHRISTOPHER
FITZ-SIMON,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.