The impression that Judy Hegarty-Lovett and Conor Lovett - together as the Gare St Lazare Players Ireland - have some authority in the staging of Samuel Beckett is, they insist, only an impression, and a manufactured one. It didn't come from them, although it is probably fair to say it is a consequence of the style and consistency of their approach to the writer, writes Mary Leland.

For the past five years they have worked on solo and serial presentations, building up a touring programme that includes The Beckett Trilogy (recitals of Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable) along with Lessness, performed by Olwen Fouéré; Texts for Nothing featuring Conor Lovett; Ally Ní Chiaráin reading from Enough; and the American actress Lee Delong from Worstward Ho. All directed by Judy Hegarty-Lovett, these last three make up the Beckett programme they are presenting in Cork as part of the Cork European Capital of Culture 2005 celebrations.

The impression of authority probably has something to do with the professionalism of their presentation also - both of themselves, where their own married amiability softens the stark production values, and of their commitment to theatre. As husband and wife they are cheerful, the parents of three young children, living part of the year in Ireland and the rest in France, with Paris as their domestic and career base. As workers in theatre their unity has a different texture, sharp-edged and apparently absolute. But it is unity - while they both work with other companies and other disciplines, together they work things out.

Judy is articulate, witty and confident. Conor is given to long pauses. There's a kind of heroic introspection going on, but there's also an impression of great good humour and fun - their mutual sense of comedy is another unifying factor. Both are from Cork, where Judy did her degree in art and mixed media studies at the Crawford College of Art and Design and Conor, son of the restaurant family and brother of the actor Louis, studied at a bilingual secretarial college.

That took him to Paris: friends in Cork had introduced him to UCC's Dramat, where he joined the cast of Blood Wedding directed by John Crowley ("And you were very good in that," interjects Judy). In Paris, he headed for the École Jacques Lecoq, where he trained as an actor. When Judy joined him they both got involved with the Gare St Lazare Players, where she worked as assistant to its founder and artistic director, Bob Meyers, before moving on to become the in-house director at the Theatre Marie Stuart.

"That was a good time," they agree now. "There was great liberty to experiment, the audiences were very small, there was no press attention or pressure so it gave us a great opportunity to find our way."

Remembering how young they were during all this and how they seemed to be at the cutting edge of European avant-garde, what were the bad times? "Well," Judy says, "of course it got a bit dull not having press attention after a while." So they went off to London, where she took a post-graduate diploma in drama therapy. That was absorbed, she says, although not pursued as a profession. Still, I suggest, it might be useful in rehearsals? They look at one another and laugh and then agree: perhaps.

I persist with my Cork housekeeping anxieties - what had they been living on? They had become Jack and Jill of all trades, some they'd prefer not to mention. But it had been very easy to live, they think now. They don't remember struggling terribly. "There were a lot of chick peas," recalls Judy, who also says that it was in London where they decided to adapt the first-person novel Molloy for stage recital and to bring it to Edinburgh.

It went very well. "I think that was our first taste of success," says Judy, although Conor indicates that he's still waiting to discover the real meaning of that word. "But that is success," Judy insists. "Queues at the box office, great reviews - that is success!"

Whatever else it may have been, it was certainly the public affirmation of their almost evangelistic approach to Beckett's prose as stage material. It all comes from the novels written between 1947 and 1983. In excavating them for their productions, they are aware that others have done the same - Barry McGovern, Patrick Magee, Billie Whitelaw among them - and say there's nothing new, "except us".

There's a lot more to come: "As you work with any given writer," says Conor, "you become on the one hand more familiar with the work, but at the same time it's a case of the more you know the less you know. It's very hard for me to settle on an opinion in these matters, it's so hard to say what I love about the work. You'd be afraid that if you settle on one thing that could seem to be the only thing of importance. You recognise the patterns, of course. But when you think at some point, having done so much, that you are beginning to understand some things, then you realise the breadth of the work, the quality of the mind."

For Judy, who admits that the first play she ever saw ("Well, I would have been to the panto, like") was Waiting for Godot at the now-vanished Ivernia Theatre in Cork, dealing with Beckett is like an archaeological dig, finding more and more as you continue the excavation.

"What you're doing, or being, is not settling on any given philosophy, it's what the writing itself is, always searching. I identify with the power of the language, with the unwritten emotional content which is both intriguing and stimulating. It seems to evolve throughout the piece, almost not mentioned, a hidden existence, but it exists nonetheless."

We are talking in the new wing of Cork's city museum where the cabinets are arranged to reveal, through ceiling-high windows, the abundantly green lawns and gardens of Sundays Well across the river that flows past the museum grounds. The great mass of trees is still coloured, and there is a sense that the verdure can almost be touched from this exhibition hall, chosen by the Lovetts as a venue (and a rehearsal space) for their 2005 performances.

They've sought out other possible spaces - the printing floor in the Irish Examiner, the Masonic Lodge and the City Council Chamber among them. "When we made our proposal to 2005, one of the criteria we aimed to meet was that of some connection with Cork city itself, to have something indigenous to Cork," explains Judy. "So we felt we'd like to connect with buildings to which - the museum excepted - the public might not have much access. And this corresponds to our approach to Beckett's prose: there, but not as well known as the plays and not usually considered totally accessible."

"Well," says Conor, "it wasn't a case of saying that Beckett is inaccessible."

He pauses, and we all know what he means. His reflective manner is belied by the activity to which both of them are committed for the foreseeable future. During the summer he was in California working with Walter Asmus, director of the Gate production of Waiting for Godot and a long-time friend and collaborator of Beckett's.

Judy is working with Helen Carey to establish the Beckett Project at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris (formerly the Irish College) and has directed a reading of Tom McIntyre's The Great Hunger for the "Reading the Decades" programme at the Abbey in October during the Dublin Theatre Festival. They presented Enough as part of the Dublin Fringe at the National Gallery and Judy, who recently directed Michael Harding's play Swallow, is preparing to work with him again on a new script. Next year they will produce Beckett's seven radio plays for RTÉ's celebration of the Beckett centenary.

In the meantime, Conor has begun to work in film, a prospect that arouses a rare expression of excitement.

Acknowledging the support they've received from Cork City Council and the Arts Councilfor their 2005 project, the couple know they are in the privileged position of being asked to do the work they love to do. It's not too lucrative - "it's theatre, after all" - but the more they create, the more it generates other work. "I just want to feed the children, really," says Conor.

All the same, given that Beckett is all they say he is and more, doesn't he ever get a wild urge to do something else? Something by Noel Coward, say? "No," he says without hesitation. "Noel Coward was never my thing."

Gare St Lazare Players Ireland present Access All Beckett directed by Judy Hegarty Lovett: Worstward Ho with Lee Delong, Cork Public Museum, Fitzgerald's Park, Apr 6-8 and 11-15, 8pm (Sat 9, 6pm), previews Apr 4 and 5. Texts for Nothing with Conor Lovett, Masonic Lodge, Tuckey St, Cork, Apr 8-10, 8pm, preview Apr 7. Enough with Ally Ní Chiaráin, The Other Place, South Main Street, Cork, Apr 9 and 11-16, 1.30pm, duration 15 mins. Tickets on the door or from 021-4503077/ 021-4501673