Gates of Gold explores the nature of love and a unique partnership between two men, one a great actor now approaching the end of his life, and the other an eminent director. A passionate, witty and moving play, inspired by the true story of two of Ireland’s greatest artistic figures - the founders of the Gate Theatre, Hilton Edwards and Mícheál MacLiammóir, it offers a fascinating glimpse of two lives devoted to each other and to the theatre they founded. Originally produced at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2002, Frank McGuinness’ play now receives its British premiere at the Finborough Theatre, directed by exciting new Irish talent Gavin McAlinden.

The distinguished cast is John Bennett, William Gaunt, Kika Markham, Aoife McMahon and Alan Turkington. John Bennett’s many credits include Richard II and Coriolanus (Almeida Theatre), A Christmas Carol (RSC), Inner Voices (Royal National Theatre) and many West End musicals including On Your Toes, Marilyn, The Sound of Music and The King & I and his Olivier Award nominated performance as Louis Epstein in Jolson. Many TV and Film credits include The Pianist, The Fifth Element, Priest and Philip Bosinney in the original The Forsyte Saga; William Gaunt’s credits include Humble Boy, Albert Speer, The Cherry Orchard, Look Back In Anger, The Mysteries, An Inspector Calls (all Royal National Theatre), and extensive TV credits including Next Of Kin, The Champions, GBH and No Place Like Home; Josie Kidd whose TV credits include Life Begins, Down to Earth, Hot Money, Murder in Mind, Peak Practice, Viking in My Bed and Silent Witness and Family Affairs; Aoife McMahon who played Beauty in Beauty and the Beast (RSC), Scenes from the Picture (RNT) and the TV mini-series Random Passage; and Alan Turkington whose recent credits include John Bull's Other Island (Tricycle), Pericles, The Tempest and The Winter's Tale (RSC).

Gates of Gold was very sadly the last stage appearance of the late John Bennett.

Frank McGuinness’ plays include Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (Abbey Theatre and Hampstead Theatre – winner of the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright), Carthaginians (Abbey and Hampstead), Mary and Lizzie (RSC), Someone Who'll Watch Over Me (Hampstead, West End and Broadway), Mutabilitie (Royal National Theatre), Dolly West's Kitchen (Abbey and Old Vic). His translations include Rosmersholm (RNT), Peer Gynt (Gate Theatre, Dublin, RSC and RNT), A Doll's House (Broadway), The Caucasian Chalk Circle (RNT), Electra (Chichester, Donmar Warehouse and Broadway), The Storm (Almeida), Miss Julie (Playhouse) and Hecuba (Donmar Warehouse).

The Press on the Gate Theatre Dublin Production
“There is gold in Frank McGuinness's new play.” Emer O'Kelly, Sunday Independent
"Comic and elegiac...one of his best plays, a moving meditation on the transience of love, life, and theatre” The Guardian
"This play enthralled me...There is something gorgeous about it" The Financial Times

The Press on Gates of Gold at the Finborough Theatre
Time Out Critics' Choice
Nicholas De Jongh Recommends Evening Standard. Critics Choice
***** Five Stars Best Theatre In London - Evening Standard
**** Four Stars What's On In London
**** Four Stars The Sunday Express

"True love conquers all to the end.
There are just a few indelible theatrical occasions when you witness something profoundly intimate yet of universal resonance. Just such a life enhancing experience occurs at the close of Frank McGuinness’ superlative play about death’s challenge. Gates of Gold deals with the spiritual struggle of an old man who wavers between accepting hard reality and clinging to the comfort of illusion and self deception. A death’s head humour keeps breaking the spell. At last William Gaunt’s unforgettable Gabriel, an orotund hunk of gay majesty, bewigged, powdered and painted like a pantomime dame, lies in bed. Cocooned in morphia’s sway, he asks his lover to come to bed and, as if escaping to childhood, demands a goodnight story. His lover, unable to bring himself to speak in the painful first person, expresses adoration in the third person confessional. The final image is of John Bennett’s poignant, introverted Conrad holding Gabriel in a terminal embrace. Lips to lips, two ancient men locked in each others arms. The gayness of the characters, who are based upon famous English born theatricals actor Micael Mac Liammoir and director Hilton Edwards, who founded the Gate Theatre in Ireland is crucial. At death’s door, the mendacious Gabriel, in a ridiculous wig, still cannot resist touching up his face and life, painting them both as drama’s of freshly minted fantasy. Gabriel believes in his enduring handsomeness a belief mocked by frequent spotlights on the lovers youthful portrait. He bickers with Conrad, is uneasily conscious of his childlessness and religions contempt for him. He shows the reactive symptoms of someone living through a time when homosexuality was illegal and anathematised. Gavin McAlinden’s powerfully nuanced production, contained in sets of gilded baroque picture frames, is remarkable for Gaunt’s magnificently various performance. Gabriel is by turns florid, fearful and fanciful. In facing up to his sparky nurse (Aoife McMahon), his disturbed nephew (the superbly vehement Alan Turkington) and his dizzy sister (Josie Kidd), he both plays the role of a dying man and genuinely lives the part. Overwhelming."
Nicholas De Jongh, Evening Standard

"William Gaunt’s Gabriel is captivating. His startlingly bright blue eyes dancing, his delighted delivery of McGuinness’ bitchy repartee and camp innuendo can give way with heart twisting suddenness to naked terror."
Sam Marlowe, The Times

"Another Irish play, not of abandonment, but about a lifetime commitment, is beautifully summoned in Frank McGuinness’ exquisite Gates of Gold. Based on the real life relationship between the two men who founded Dublin’s Gate Theatre, William Gaunt brings wit and dignity to his portrayal of a man cantankerously facing death as his partner (John Bennett) looks helplessly on"
Mark Shenton, Sunday Express

"Frank McGuinness’ short, eloquent play based on the life, or rather death, of actor Micheal MacLiammoir, was first performed in 2002 at Dublin’s Gate Theatre, the theatre Michael MacLiammoir and his director partner Hilton Edwards once ran together. Quite why the play has taken so long to reach London is a mystery. Slumped on the bed, actor Gabriel (William Gaunt) is wearing dollops of slap and a jet black wig. The dying man is cared for by his more discreet partner Conrad and a waspish nurse called Alma. Gabriel, a born fantasist, puts on a mega watt performance as he bitches and rages at Conrad, confides in Alma, and looks back on a life in which he and Conrad were unusually open about their homosexuality in spite of its then illegality. The transience of life and theatre become intertwined as the pair wonder what they have achieved in their long careers. Although Gaunt revels in Gabriel’s camp excesses, the final rapprochement when he asks Conrad (John Bennett) to join him on the bed, is extremely moving. It’s a star turn from Gaunt but everyone pulls their weight in a real Fringe find."
Jane Edwards, Time Out

"Director Gavin McAlinden has achieved something of a coup by staging the British premiere of a Frank McGuinness play at the Finborough Theatre. Such events might more commonly be viewed at the National or the RSC. Gates of Gold is set in the Southern Irish home of thespians, Gabriel and Conrad. They are based on actor, designer and playwright Micheal Mac Liammoir and his partner, director Hilton Edwards, cofounders of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Gabriel is close to death and the play addresses his life, more as memoirs than biography. The world premiere a couple of years ago, inevitably at The Gate, featured Alan Howard and Richard Johnson as Gabriel and Conrad respectively. In this production, William Gaunt makes Gabriel vulnerable but also brave in his last painful days, while John Bennett’s Conrad has to contemplate a new kind of life either alone or in different company. The couple had lived an openly gay life when it was illegal to do so and are still utterly devoted, despite a mutual history of misadventures with taxi drivers. Into their lives come three strange outsiders. Nose ringed nurse, Alma, played by Aoife McMahon, has her own problems that sometimes seem to dwarf those of her patient, but comes to love him. The other pair, his sister and her son, are the kind of relations that no one needs in times of stress: selfish, greedy and in need of love, even at the expense of the suffering. The actors in the three key roles all impress, especially Gaunt as the larger than life Gabriel, and there is a surprisingly lavish set designed by Vicki Fifield. In a very small space, it manages combines living room, bedroom and dressing room. It includes memorable touches such as golden cherubs and a theatrical dressing table, complete with light bulbs. Gates of Gold gives an insight into theatrical life but far more into two eccentric men and their love that literally dared not speak its name"
Philip Fisher, British Theatre Guide

"Flamboyance and Fidelity in the closing scene of life. Well directed for Charm Offensive at the Finborough by Gavin McAlinden . . Designer Vicki Fifield turns the Finborough’s intimacy into a chamber of illusion, all golden panels, prefiguring the titles description of death as a threshold, with paintings hung all round. Alan Turkington shows Ryan’s anger, Josie Kidd brings relaxed satisfaction to Kassie, enjoying life her own way, while Aoife McMahon’s Alma switches sharply between calm and fury, bringing an unknown realm of experience into this enclosed world. But the production’s triumph is the pairing of William Gaunt’s florid, Gabriel with his elegantly resonant voice going with camp tinsel into the dark night of death, while that fine actor John Bennett’s Conrad, devoid of theatricality, has a deep love reaching a touching apogee curled on the bed with his dying partner."
Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate.com

"This extraordinary piece, both humorous and harrowing, is inspired by two famous theatrical figures and long-term lovers, Micheal Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards. An old actor, powdered and bewigged, trapped between cruel reality and consoling make belief, plays brave and fearful as death impends. William Gaunt and John Bennett, sensationally poignant in his intimate setting, evoke an age when homosexuality was still illegal"
Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard Metro Life

"McGuinnesss’ play is loosely inspired by the lives of director Micheal MacLiammoir and his actor partner Hilton Edwards, who founded Dublin’s Gate Theatre, where it was originally performed in 2003 with Alan Howard and Richard Johnson in the leading roles. It follows the final days of once successful actor Gabriel, now confined to his ornate gold leaf bedroom, who treats dying as his last great part as he relives past resentments and achievements with his lover, Conrad. The dynamic between these two Bennett’s quiet, thoughtful Conrad is virtually straight man to Gaunt’s camp attention-seeking Gabriel fizzes from the start and never falters. The gates of the title are variously a metaphor for heaven, sex and the theatrical imagination and this touching, often very funny play reflects on all three. Possibly the script brims with too many possibilities but the writing always has a thoughtful, lyrical quality and is much enhanced by Paul Colwill’s soft afternoon and evening lighting. The deep love behind Gabriel and Conrad’s bickering old queens act veers between comedy and tragedy, while McAlinden’s sensitive, nuanced direction finds sadness as well as achievement in the way this gay couple’s theatrical activities have become their children. Most surprising is Gabriel’s touching relationship with the sensible young nurse Alma (McMahon), who cares for him whilst grieving over the death of her beloved twin brother. Their rather strange affinity suggests we can all find salvation in unlikely places but no matter how loved we are we will ultimately die alone."
Colin Shearman, The Stage

"[The] Finborough Theatre with Charm Offensive is presenting the British premiere of Frank McGuiness’ Gates of Gold, originally produced at Dublin’s Gate theatre in 2002. Why has this captivating play based on the two founders of Dublin’s Gate theatre taken so long to hit these shores and find a home? And why is it not playing in a larger house? The National ought to be showcasing it. If there is any justice in the world, this one should run and run. I did not want its ninety minutes of intense, dazzling writing, singing of an eternal love that dared to speak its name, and its first class acting, to end. Young rising director, Gavin McAlinden, directs with a fine eye and ear, assisted by designers Vicki Fifield and Alena Ondrackova (costume), composer James Jones, and lighting by Paul Colwill. Laurels and plaudits to all concerned, especially to artistic director Neil McPherson for capturing this play.
Gabriel, the Micheal Mac Liammoir character, is dying in his gilt and cherub covered flat, under a portrait of the artist and his friend as beautiful young men. He knows it, his partner Conrad, the Hilton Edwards doppelganger, knows it (Can you prepare him for dying?), his highly strung nephew Ryan (brooding Alan Turkington), in love with both ageing men, knows it, his newly appointed nurse Alma (feisty Aoife McMahon) bluntly declares it a "dying old fool". His fey, poker playing sister Kassie (a delightful Josie Kidd) knows it, though like Gabriel of the same fantasising stock, she denies it to keep it at bay. Can you prepare anyone for dying? Gabriel delays it a little with his own tall tales of his origins and creative youth, fantasy and reality blur, what does it matter. Stories sustain life, excuse life, embellish a life lived, conceal deeply felt emotions. It’s the vivid lies that keep you alive and make life worth living. "I believe what I remember". The old and the young are not so different. Theatrical old trouper that he is, with his actor’s empathetic skills Gabriel understands Alma’s grief and pain at the early death of her twin brother and her survivor’s guilt. A strange rapport between old stage queen and young bitter girl develops. What a well-matched gabby pair they are. Mutual respect, compassion and undying love assist his last hours. In his stained Victorian nightgown, fearful of dying in the dirt, fearful of suffering, rehearsing his final words, he is helped to a dignified fading of the light by his loyal companions. "Dying is like being stuck in a traffic jam in Limerick". "Life’s a death sentence . . .you’re so perceptive". "Tell me a goodnight story, give me a fantasy". And what a scene stealing central performance from William Gaunt in black wig and painted face: "my Desdemona days are past". Mac Liammoir would be proud of him, or envious. Capricious mood swings, from bitchy and selfishly petulant to sympatico, from wheedling little boy lost to old man’s fears, from folly to wisdom, from dark to light and back again. Funny, tender, touching, sweet, sad, haunting, lyrical, poetic. A love story. McGuiness has excelled himself in re-imagining and giving voice to the quirky, quicksilver Micheal Mac Liammoir, and his devoted partner Hilton Edwards. Some of their bickering repartee is better than stand-up comedy, and as unrepeatable. John Bennett as Conrad, the stolid, patient foil to Gabriel’s frilly flights of fancy: he’s heard it all before; delivers generously understated acting that brings tears to the eyes. "What am I without you?" His final embrace with Gabriel is heartbreaking in its quiet emotion. Stunned silence, then darkness. The best spent hour and a half in the theatre this year. Memorable, mercurial, mesmerising."
Vera Liber, Plays International

"To characterise the differences of repertoire and sensibility between Dublin’s Gate and Abbey theatres, city wags used to refer to them as Sodom and Gomorrah.
The Gate, which began life in 1928, earned its Sodom sobriquet thanks to its founding directors, Micheal Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards. In a society that did not decriminalise homosexuality until the 1990’s, they lived as an openly gay married couple. Micheal, in particular, formulated his own rules. Born in England and about as Irish as Oxford marmalade, he reinvented himself as the quintessence of Irishness, winning awards, medals and honorary degrees for his Gaelic writing as well as renown for his portrayal of another larger than life gay export (and genuine Irishman) Oscar Wilde. Now receiving its British premiere in a handsome and haunting production by Gavin McAlinden, Frank McGuinesss’ play Gates of Gold is not a straightforward bio job. Instead, it comes across as though it were the fifth act in the high drama of a relationship based on theirs. The story follows the last days of Gabriel, a flamboyant Mac Liammoir like actor come designer. Making things up has been a way of live for him, and, as he awaits, wracked with bowel cancer, the final curtain, he remains incorrigible.
Dispensing Wildean witticisms (dying is rather like being stuck in a traffic jam in Limerick), he plasters on enough slap to satisfy a pantomime dame. He treats his young nurse (Aoife McMahon) to so many contradictory versions of his origin that she asks: How many fathers and mothers do you have? His reply: As many as is needed to survive them. A bulky, raddled William Gaunt turns in a magnificent performance in this role, affording you piercing glimpses of the desperate, hunted man inside the painted queen. Bickering and bantering with his more introverted partner, Conrad (fine John Bennett), Gabriel pungently evokes the world of gay men at the time. Around him orbits the nurse (whose work with the dying is a clunkily established compensation for having walked away from her twin brother in a fatal car crash), his sister, Kassie, (Josie Kidd), who also has difficulties with the truth, and his disturbed gay nephew (Alan Turkington), who succumbs to the sexual advances of Conrad. If theatre can be a hackneyed metaphor for the transitory nature of achievement, the special circumstances of these men (who left the Gate as their offspring) lend it a fresh poignancy in a flawed but touching play."
Paul Taylor, The Independent

"Having secured the rights to the British premiere of a play by one of contemporary dramas most admired playwrights, Frank McGuinness, the Finborough delivers an immaculate and enthralling production by Charm Offensive, which proves to be one of the richest theatrical experiences to be had in London at the moment. The tiny space is used to maximum effect by actors, director and designer. The impact of this rare creative unity is felt in the opening moments as William Gaunt as Gabriel, seated at his dressing table, turns his black bewigged head towards us and we look into the sad eyes of the ravaged, overpainted face of an old actor, full of crumbling grandeur. It’s a wonderfully simple and sympathetic theatrical effect. The early promise of emotional veracity is fulfilled in the performance: Gaunt gives a superbly judged portrait of a dying man, proud and flamboyant, blending camp wit with passion. As the play hangs round the personality of Gabriel, so the production hangs round Gaunt’s performance, at once majestic and vulnerable. The play is an incisive study of what it is like to be dying, despising your own body as it is degraded by the pain and dirt of disease. It is not depressing: Gabriel defies illness not just by creating an illusion of his decayed beauty, but more successfully by comforting himself with stories. He believes lies. They give him courage to live. The character of Gabriel is based on Micheal Mac Liammoir, co founder with his lover and life partner Hilton Edwards of the Gate Theatre in Dublin, who reinvented himself in real life. McGuinness demonstrates the transforming power of makebelief. This traditional insistence on the central importance of storytelling in human lives is repeated in contemporary Irish drama. The fire of imagination with which Gabriel burns lights up the play itself, which is full of imagery of fire and light. There’s an early scene with Alma, the young nurse, in which he teases her and us with invented stories of his parentage and upbringing, changing them at will. His mercenary sister Cassie, played with an edge to her dizzy battiness by Josie Kidd, joins him in these fantasy games, unsettling, sometimes cruel to others. He forces, or at least influences, Alma, strongly played with fiery spirit by Aoife McMahon, to turn to role play herself, as a way of revealing buried emotions. Lies and game playing have another, not destructive, but life enhancing side. It is through drama that Gabriel combats mortality, and, childless as he and Conrad are, he seeks to leave his mark and make sense of his life through his artistic achievements. He needs his lovers reassurance that he was a good actor. Gates of Gold is full of perceptive comments about the nature of drama and acting, which are ideally embodied by all the actors. John Bennett’s restrained, carefully measured and devoted Conrad, who has been the director of the two, gives Gabriel the shrewdest acting note ever: I ask you to do more, only to do it less obviously. None of the actors under the real director, Gavin McAlinden, strike a false note. Gaunt handles real suffering and gay ripostes alike with unwavering regard for naturalism, never committing an obvious inflection. McAlinden has ensured that the pace, tension and truthfulness are sustained throughout... The play ends triumphantly, however, in an elegiac affirmation of Conrad and Gabriel’s love. It has been a true marriage, and a passionate mutual love that has survived the bickering and the pressures of infidelities and gay persecution."
J. Sheridan, Rogues and Vagabonds

“Gates of Gold, which I wouldn’t have missed for anything. There was something thrilling about seeing a West End cast, led with bravura by William Gaunt, and West End production values (set by Vicki Fifield) on the Finborough stage; thrilling, and also chilling, for this is the likely future fate of many a fine play (and Frank McGuinness is an exceptionally fine one, looking deeply and with a poets eye at death and friendship, lies and illusions), as the West End retreats into wall to wall musicals and leaves serious new writing to the National, the Royal Court and the fringe"
Ian Herbert, Theatre Record

The Press on Gates of Gold in the West End
Time Out Critics’ Choice
**** Four Stars Evening Standard
**** Four Stars, Financial Times
**** Four Stars, The Sunday Telegraph
*** Four Stars, The Sunday Times

“Frank McGuinness’s bitterly comic, beautifully observed play”
Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard

“Painful and poignant” Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard

“McGuinness has said Gates of Gold, which I admired at the Finborough in 2004, is not a strictly biographical piece” Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard

“Canny young director Gavin McAlinden manages to give a more persuasive account of Gates of Gold than it received at its 2002 Dublin premiere”
Dominic Cavendish, The Daily Telegraph

“Highly recommended” Dominic Cavendish, The Daily Telegraph

“William Gaunt and Paul Freeman in Frank McGuinness’s eloquent account of the partnership of Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards, a couple who came out in Catholic Dublin when it took some guts to do so.” Time Out

"William Gaunt has already had a big success as Gabriel in the first English production of this play at the Finborough two years ago, when Conrad was played by the late Jon Bennett. This partly recast West End revival is dedicated to Bennett’s memory. It is a worthy tribute.” Howard Loxton, Rogues and Vagabonds

“The hilarious and affecting Gates of Gold” Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times

“Frank McGuinness’s play turns out to be one of his best, an elegiac comedy of death in which survival has little to be said for it.”
John Peter, The Sunday Times

“A remarkable evening of theatre” Scott Matthewman, The Stage