ARTS: For his version of Molière's 'The Misanthrope', Martin Crimp transformed Alceste into a bilious playwright railing against the London glitterati. He tells Ian Shuttleworth about his own transformation into a translator and adaptor of a French classic

There could almost be two Martin Crimps. On the one hand, there's the writer of allusive, elusive, elliptical pieces such as Attempts On Her Life and The Country, a stalwart of the new writing culture centred on the Royal Court Theatre in London. On the other, you have the translator of French classics by authors ranging from Ionesco and Genet to Marivaux and Molière.

It's the second Crimp that's unveiled in Dublin tonight: the first professional Irish production of his work is the Gate's staging of his version of Molière's The Misanthrope. "It came a bit out of the blue," says Crimp in London, "and I was quite excited because the Gate has a really good reputation, and some of the work that's come over here I've admired. And, by coincidence, I had been in Dublin about a year ago, and I'd seen the theatre, which is highly appropriate for this piece: it has a neoclassical feeling to it, and also it's a modern building with a reputation for doing modern work."

For this is a "version" rather than just a translation of Molière's comedy. When first seen in London, in 1996, it was set in a clique of that city's glitterati, with Alceste as a bilious playwright railing against the culture. Crimp even turns one character into a critic called Covington, a portmanteau name of two of the London brigade's most imposing reviewers.

"I didn't actually know at the time I did this that I would become so involved in the field of translating from the French," says Crimp. "I did work directly from the French text, but this was my way of trying to deal with what I consider the beauty, the glitter and the brilliance of the original text. The other translations I've done, I felt, haven't required that amount of cultural transposition to make them sing, as it were, in English."

As for a specific reference, such as "Covington", he says, "I think it's like the original specificity of Molière. He was somebody who, the king would see a play and say, 'I'd like this rewrite tomorrow, let's do a little portrait of so-and-so.' It doesn't matter who Covington is, we just know that he's the figure of the critic who's being undermined by a playwright. And this is something that many people enjoy. Particularly some playwrights. And some critics!"

Crimp may have fallen into translation, but he relishes the twin strands to his career. "I see it as a different job. And, in a way, that's quite refreshing, because it makes you question those qualities that you might value in your own work. It's like some kind of linguistic workout, because you find yourself reaching for words that might have been proscribed for some illusory idea of your own identity as writer. So I've begun to embrace this idea that there are a whole variety of different ways of writing. I quite like the fact that there are knight's moves in my work."

Knight's moves, to say the least: his most famous original work, Attempts On Her Life, from 1997, consists of 17 disconnected scenes in which unspecified characters describe a mysterious offstage figure named Anne in a variety of oblique and often contradictory ways - everything from a European terrorist to a new model of sports car. "I had no idea when I wrote Attempts On Her Life, no idea; it was a thing about despair, really. I thought, fuck it, what is a play? I don't know what a play is. Fuck it; this is what I want to write; I'll do this; no one will want to put it on.

"But then the Royal Court did, and I was amazed, because I was very naive, and actually it turns out to be a gift for directors. And I was amazed how many people took it up."

Perhaps Crimp's early encounters with theatre were formative. "I didn't come from a theatrical environment at all. My first theatrical experience was when I was something like 18, and the first thing I saw was Not I" - Samuel Beckett's short play, which consists of a disembodied mouth jabbering for 15-odd minutes. "So there I was, this provincial teenager sitting in the circle of the Royal Court Theatre - I've still got my ticket - the curtain goes up, I didn't know the text and I thought, what's going on? It was extraordinary." He still cites Beckett as a principal model.

The approach he takes in his original writing has led to his being particularly fêted in Europe: an Internet search of Crimp's name will unearth as many articles written in German as in English, and many more in French. "One of the huge strengths of our theatre is that it has remained connected with real life and is rightly fascinated by narrative. But there is always a danger that a writer won't find a way of lifting that narrative and that real life off the ground. So you could argue that a play like Attempts On Her Life or The Country just lifts off slightly, I don't know how. And this appeals to a European sensibility - God knows why. Of course, there's tons of terrible pretentiousness as well, but the upside is an appetite and also an openness to what is a theatrical text. Germany has been a big thing for me; France has just recently happened, which is quite satisfying, since The Misanthrope is where I invented myself as a translator, and now the French have started paying some interest. Finally. Enfin!" he jokes.

Translation, for Crimp, has also perhaps been a way of realising which elements had been missing from his own work. "There was a certain emotional detachment, which I've fought against. I think, if you're going to develop as a writer, you have to start heating up a bit. And maybe The Misanthrope was a way of finding that, because there are parts of that play that are very hot emotionally. The big confrontation between Alceste and Célimène - or Jennifer, as I call her - is actually based on a failed tragedy that Molière wrote. And I think in my adaptation it remains quite a hot scene between this couple."

It's now seven years since The Misanthrope was first staged, and Ireland is "the last of the English-speaking - if I'm allowed to say that - territories" to see it. Have there been instances where Crimp has had to tweak references over time and across the globe? "I have tweaked and I have tweaked back. When I first wrote it, there is only one passage that I discovered was vulnerable, which was where I chose to refer quite specifically to John Major and his Back to Basics campaign, and that political hypocrisy around sexual behaviour. After Blair came in and everything seemed squeaky-clean, this started to pall a little, so I made changes for New York and Australia.

"Now we've actually gone back to the original version of sexual hypocrisy, because everybody assures me that that is what is going to be the most topical and striking the right note in the Irish Republic!"

• The Misanthrope, directed by Alan Stanford, opens at the Gate Theatre in Dublin tonight for a limited run. Tickets (€24/€22) from 01-8744045/6042