Samuel Beckett may have spent most of his adult life downplaying his Irishness, but there is no doubt that his best-known play gains from being performed in an Irish idiom. That's the distinguishing feature of Walter Asmus's excellent production, revived here 12 years after its premiere in the Gate's first Beckett festival; it has gone on to become the theatre's signature production, and formed the basis for the screen version directed for the recent RTE/Channel 4 Beckett on Film series by Michael Lindsay Hogg.
As in the original, this production features the peerless double-act of Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy as Didi and Gogo, and the doughy, imperious Alan Stanford as Pozzo. Rising Beckett star Conor Lovett makes a stunning debut as a heartbreakingly near-cogent Lucky. What McGovern and Murphy capture so brilliantly in their verbal interplay is the lightness and rhythm of spoken Hiberno-English; their exchanges bring to mind less the music hall, more pub banter.
The Hibernicisms in the script leap out when they play it: Estragon refers to Godot as "your man"; when asked to help Estragon with his shoe, McGovern's Vladimir replies "I will a'course"; they call the vista on which they stand a "bog" and a "muckheap".
And while it is not hammered home with excessive force here, that Pozzo speaks in plummy Queen's English adds a new layer of meaning to his subjugation of the Irish-accented Lucky.
As the latter, Lovett's innovation is to take his famous speech at about half the velocity of his predecessors in the role. It is as if he is just about able to make sense of this spew of cod-philosophy, and that perhaps he stops himself from truly comprehending because the reality of his life is so terrible.
The physical production is perfectly spare and brilliantly observed: Louis le Brocquy's cut-out tree, Pozzo's undersized bowler that looks like a pith helmet, Rupert Murray's peerless lighting that creates different layers of isolation on stage.
McGovern, Murphy, and Stanford bring extraordinary freshness to their performances given that they have played them hundreds of times. It is only towards the end that a hamminess creeps into Stanford and McGovern's playing of their final big speeches.
This year is the 50th anniversary of Godot's world premiere in Paris, but productions this solid are the best reminder of Beckett's genius.
· Until February 1. Box office: 00 353 1 874 4045
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