The work of Brian Friel has fuelled the career of Mick Gordon, and now the director, with help from a few familiar faces, has come full circle with his latest project, writes Jane Coyle.

Memory is an uncertain companion, an elusive, shifty creature, entirely at the mercy of the person doing the remembering. Director Mick Gordon, whose new production of Dancing at Lughnasa opened at Belfast's Lyric Theatre on Tuesday, readily admits to having read many plays during his days at school and at Oxford University. Yet, he can say with equal conviction that this is the first play he ever read.

"Plainly, that claim is untrue," he says. "But the truth is that this play is the reason that I have been directing theatre for the past 15 years.

"At the end, the Narrator, whose play it is, reports a most burning memory. What is fascinating is that while it is based in reality, it is not entirely real. Like him, I have this impression that this was the first play I ever read and for that reason it is burned into my consciousness."

Gordon was in his final year at Oxford when he was given the script by Jim O'Hanlon, now a well-known writer and television director. It was his first encounter with Brian Friel's work but it was to make the most profound impression.

"At the moment when the sisters started to dance - even just reading the stage directions - I burst into tears," he recalls. "This man, Brian Friel, had given me, a Protestant from Belfast, a door back home, a means of exploring the emotional varieties of Irishness that had not been encouraged among my own culture.

"At that time, Seamus Heaney had just been made Professor of Poetry at Oxford; Tom Paulin and Roy Foster were there too. The creative influence of the Irish was very strong. But the person who gave me the key to the door of my own home was Friel."

After reading Lughnasa, he made his way through the entire canon of Friel's plays and, in 2000, achieved a personal ambition to direct one of them.

"I directed the UK premiere of Volunteers at the Gate Theatre in London. It had had a rather cool reception when it was premiered in Dublin. As I often do in my work, I set out to re-evaluate and reassess it. The production was phenomenally praised and Peter Brook asked us to do it in his Bouffes du Nord Theatre in Paris. Like so many who saw it, he was profoundly touched by the image of these characters, these archaeologists, unearthing their history - literally, mining Irishness."

Gordon, who comes from Holywood in Co Down, has spent his entire career working out of London. Widely acknowledged as one of the brightest and most innovative of the current generation of directors, he has figured prominently in the hugely successful audience-building strategy of Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre on London's South Bank. Some of his earliest work was with the legendary Peter Brook, whom he pairs with Friel as the two most influential creative forces in his career. He has directed in many exotic and far-flung locations - among them, South America, Uganda, Lithuania, Uzbekistan - and after Belfast he will travel to Belgrade, to prepare for his next production.

"You can work all over the world, but there is something incredibly exciting about working at home for the first time," he says. "It has seemed like such an intimate experience, this whole time here for me. I have wanted to do this play for years, but not just anywhere. It was crucial for me to do it back in Belfast - for it to be my first full production here. The emotion in it very strongly mirrors my own relationship with home."

At the centre of a cast that took Gordon no less than seven weeks to assemble - "I have never spent so much time on casting, but it was vital, particularly with the sisters, to get it just right" - appears a familiar face from the play's 1990 Abbey Theatre premiere.

"I find it amazing that Gerard McSorley has come back to play Uncle Jack, after originating the role of the young man Michael and performing it in Dublin, the West End, Broadway - as well as narrating it on film," says Gordon.

And for McSorley, too, the experience is proving nothing less than a revelation. "Although I know the play so well, it feels very fresh and new," he says, his face lighting up as he describes a pleasure akin to meeting up with an old friend in a different time and place.

"I am hearing it in an entirely different way, because, of course, I am playing a different role. As Uncle Jack, you are right there in the thick of it, which gives you a completely different perspective from that of the Narrator, which is a rather lonely role.

"It is a joy to come back to the wonderful craftsmanship of Friel, which may appear effortless but is the result of deep and masterly consideration of almost every word. I remember him telling me once how he had spent a very long time mulling over one particular word, that he had 10 possibilities in prospect before he decided on the right one - so I had better say it right. The word was 'emblazoned'. That's the level of detail we're talking about."

As opening night approaches, Gordon is in buoyant form, even inviting a peek at the intriguing set, which is emerging on the Lyric stage. "It's a dream space, a memory space, full of unfinished, possibly imaginary, elements," he explains. "It even has its own little island - the island of Ireland. Friel connects with the mythic, through the imagined world of Ballybeg. I am attempting to reimage his vision in a new time and a new space. It is a space which is open to the unpredictability, the unreliability of memory, allowing engagement with the imagination and the mind.

"My mantra to the actors has been: Follow the script. What is the difference between a full stop and a comma? When we can define exactly what Friel wants, then we can share it with the audience."

And therein, at an artistic level, lies the force that continues to drive the work of this energetic, searching young man. But alongside runs something simpler and entirely human, impossible to suppress - the pure personal joy of the returning exile. "The novelty is of walking along the street and thinking 'this is my city, these are my people'. The city has changed so much. There are surprises and shocks. Last week, for instance, I was really taken aback when a taxi driver in Belfast told me that Protestants don't go to the theatre. That's the kind of ingrained notion that I am attempting to challenge - and Friel has handed me the key."

New look Lyric looks to the future:

After several years of hiccups and delays over its proposed site redevelopment, the Lyric Theatre is poised to take the final plunge.

"The train has left the station," says its new executive director, Michael Diskin. "Planning permission will be submitted by the end of June and the designs and consultants are all in place. While there has been a splurge of theatre building, north and south, over the years, this will be the first dedicated drama space to be built in a long time. Powerhouse spaces like this will be needed to generate the product to fill all the other venues."

While the final section of funding is still to be put in place, the theatre management is confident that government dedication and financial support for the project is sufficiently strong to ensure not only that it goes ahead but that other potential backers come on board.

Diskiis enthusiastically planning the interim stage of the operation. "We anticipate that the old Lyric building will close in January 2008 and construction work will follow a matter of months afterwards. We are hopeful that the new theatre will open in early 2010.

"During the time that we are off-site, we will be actively seeking to turn a positive into a negative. Freed from the tyrannies of repertoire, we will be looking to put productions into a variety of venues around Belfast and Northern Ireland. We will use the period as a time for trying out new work and new modes of production, for we will certainly need to broaden our range once we get into the new space."

Meanwhile, Diskin already has a number of tempting projects on the drawing board for 2008, including: the revival of a Stewart Parker play by Lynne Parker; the Irish premiere of a play by a Northern writer (for the moment, Diskin is remaining tight-lipped about the specifics); and a site-specific piece for the 2008 Belfast Festival.

Dancing at Lughnasa runs until July 7 at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast.