Brian Friel: Our extraordinary man from Buncrana

Brian Friel's new play is a masterpiece, says Michael Colgan, but its writer remains an enigma

It would be easier if he were dead. Then I wouldn't have the terror of knowing he might read this. At least Beckett was dead and, when I wrote about him, I had the small comfort of knowing that, if he wasn't, he still wouldn't read it. I suppose I go forward with the hunch and the hope that Brian Friel won't bother. He'd be too embarrassed. Trying to put words to Friel is as foolhardy as telling jokes to Tommy Cooper. He is the greatest man of language I know and any attempt to put a shape on this complex man is both presumptuous and necessarily inadequate.

I first met him more than 20 years ago when I was artistic director of the Dublin Theatre Festival. His company had just opened Translations in Derry and he was allowing it to come to the Festival. I say allowing it because he thought the event was "a horse race", but he felt the play would "sit well" at the Gate. I had read all about him: his beginnings as a teacher, two years training for the priesthood – what we call in Ireland a clerical error – and his skirmishes with politics.

When I met him he looked exactly as he had been – a schoolmaster. An enthusiast once observed, "How can genius look so ordinary", but it was years later, on meeting Beckett, that I realised that both men were extraordinary in their ordinariness. He was shy, modest, had impeccable manners, but all with an intelligence that, as my predecessor Hilton Edwards described, "could frighten you". I didn't get to know him and I'm not sure that I do now. As the great actor Donal McCann said, "He is a hard man to get to know, but an easy one to get to like".

In 1983 I became director of the Gate. Now we would work together. Maybe that's more presumption because it was hard not to be obedient. In the Eighties, Field Day, the company he founded with Stephen Rea, would do the new work and the Gate and the Abbey would share the revivals – but we'd live in hope. A new play by Friel would guarantee your year. Who's to say it wouldn't be a Faith Healer or Aristocrats or a Dancing at Lughnasa. So we waited and listened. But his privacy precluded all that. He'd talk about his bee-keeping or his collection of clocks, but never about his work. "Are you writing, Brian?" "Not at all," would be the answer. Then one day a parcel would arrive with a note saying, "I've written this play. I'm not sure it's of value, but take a look and let me know." We were off.

And those were the times that I have enjoyed most in my 20 years at the Gate. Putting together a new production by and with Friel. We would meet in Dublin's Westbury Hotel, he having made the arduous journey from his home in Donegal. He would smoke a small Cuban cigar and in summer wear a white linen jacket – our man from Buncrana – and then we would talk with relish about who should be in the play. I remember pushing for an actress of the right age, look and temperament and, in that soft Donegal accent he asked, "Is she a skilful lady?" We didn't cast her.

Friel does not write in drafts. What you get is what you get. A carefully crafted piece that has been polished and perfectly wrought before it is released. Like Pinter and Beckett, the work is done before rehearsals and he expects the same from actors.

He had come down from Donegal to discuss his new play A Month in the Country. We had gone over every aspect of it when finally he said, "Sadly, we have to give it away now." I asked what he meant, and he said, "I suppose we'd better hire a director".

If Oscar Wilde put his talent into his work and his genius into his life, then Friel could be said to have spread his genius evenly between the two, because it is in company that this private man shines. The wit, the insight, the observation, the gossip – often lethal, but addictive. After Wonderful Tennessee there was a gap and I missed the company, so I asked him to write a version of Uncle Vanya. More meetings, more cigars, more reputations questioned. Then a longer gap. I needed another fix, so I threw every idea at him – Ostrovsky, Leonid Andreyev, Pushkin – all rejected, but with humility and gentility.

I hit on the idea of three short plays by Conor McPherson, Neil Jordan and the man himself. Friel was the first to deliver a stunning version of The Lady with Lapdog called The Yalta Game. I put it to him that out of kindness he should give it a companion piece, and he said he had an unlikely idea. Afterplay arrived. Robin Lefevre to direct – we easily agreed on that, and our first choice of cast, John Hurt and Penelope Wilton, easily agreed to play the parts.

The Gate has now produced ten of Friel's plays and, though always encouraging and involved, we invariably get the sense that the productions, even those directed by himself, are never as good as the writing – somehow, Afterplay seemed different. Two magnificent performances in a short 70-minute piece showing the master at his very best. Here he has it all – the compassion, the skill, the words, the wisdom. If only he'd give interviews.

The Gate production of 'Afterplay', Gielgud Theatre, London W1 (0870 890 1105) Tuesday to 8 December