Coglan celebrates the Homecoming

Like most theatre people, Michael Colgan, the artistic director of Dublin's powerhouse Gate Theatre, assumed that London would mark the 70th birthday year of Harold Pinter, arguably our greatest living dramatist, in some style.

True, we had his latest play in an Almeida double bill, and recently (albeit belatedly) the National Theatre announced a revival of No Man's Land, to be directed by Pinter himself, for later this year. But without Colgan's passion and what he calls his "curator's gift", the event might have passed almost uncelebrated.

And celebration is Colgan's forte. In repose, with his soft brown eyes and droopy moustache, he seems like a rather mournful spaniel. But when talking about his passions - the Gate, Samuel Beckett, Pinter, David Mamet, the need to "electrify an audience's imagination" - the eyes flash, the Irish lilt becomes full-throated and even the moustache seems to bristle with energy.

Earlier this year, Colgan organised an extraordinary event in New York, a Pinter Festival in collaboration with the Lincoln Center, which included seminars (Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and David Mamet on one panel), readings and major Pinter productions from the Royal Court and the Almeida, as well as, from the Gate, a revival of The Homecoming.

This production, with a cast including Ian Holm and Lia Williams that had New York's critics competing for superlatives, now comes to London, opening at The Comedy (Pinter's unofficial West End home) on Monday.

Colgan had celebrated Pinter twice before with Gate seasons, including Pinter directing Landscape with Holm and Penelope Wilton in 1994 and (a favourite Colgan casting coup) Pinter playing Henry in The Collection in 1997.

These Pinter festivals were "extraordinarily successful in bringing a whole new audience to the Gate," says Colgan - an audience he could also attract to his Beckett festivals in the 1990s.

For him, Beckett and Pinter have "a rare common denominator: they write without the audience's needs being on their agenda". Pinter, like Beckett, has, he says, "the ability - a poetic thing, really - to defy logic and he seems to have a route, an untrammelled one, into his own subconscious." Both are "generous" writers, he says, "so universal".

Pinter, who had never acted in New York before Colgan's festival, was initially reluctant. "Are you mad?" he said. "It is out of the question."

"It'll just mean a quick trip," countered Colgan.

"You didn't ask Sam Beckett to act," said Pinter.

"He was dead," replied Colgan.

In the event, Pinter "went over the top first" in One for the Road, also briefly seen in London.

Colgan knows that although The Homecoming has had two previous London revivals, it may be hard to erase memories of Peter Hall's great RSC original, with the males of the household ferally circling Ruth, unforgettably played by the late Vivien Merchant, Pinter's first wife.