The Gate Theatre has been one of Dublin's two great theatres since its co-founding by Micheál mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards in 1928. It is known for staging European and world drama alongside the Irish canon, and has historically provided the cosmopolitan complement to the Abbey's more nationalist programme.
Orson Welles and James Mason both performed early work here. The theatre occupies a beautiful early 19th-century assembly room on Cavendish Row at the top of O'Connell Street, with an elegant Georgian interior. The programming tends toward the literary and classical.