67-527: Molly Sweeney is a two-act play by Brian Friel . It tells the story of its title character, Molly, a woman blind since infancy who undergoes an operation to try to restore her sight. Like Friel's Faith Healer , the play tells Molly's story through monologues by three characters: Molly, her husband Frank, and her surgeon, Mr. Rice. It enjoyed considerable success on the stage, but attracted little critical interest, perhaps because of its superficial similarities to Faith Healer (1979), another play composed of
134-637: A Tony Award for her performance), Catherine Byrne as Chris, Gerard McSorley as Michael, Robert Gwilym as Gerry and Donal Donnelly as Fr. Jack. The play was revived ten years after its original production, again at the Abbey Theatre with the same production team headed by Patrick Mason . The cast included the original Maggie, Anita Reeves in the role of Kate, with Jane Brennan as Agnes, Lynn Cahill as Rose, Des Cave as Fr. Jack, Steve Elliott as Gerry Evans, Anna Healy as Maggie, David Parnell as Michael and Ali White as Chris. In April 2004, Joe Dowling directed
201-555: A " Lough Derg " play for several years, and his Wonderful Tennessee (less of a critical success after its premiere in 1993 when compared to other plays from this time) portrays three couples in their failed attempt to return to a pilgrimage sit to a small island off the Ballybeg coast, though they intend to return not to revive the religious rite but to celebrate the birthday of one of their members with alcohol and culinary delicacies. Give Me Your Answer Do! premiered in 1997 and recounts
268-505: A 1965 interview stating, "I don't concentrate on the theatre at all. I live on short stories." Friel then turned his attention to contemporary Irish political issues, writing The Mundy Scheme (1969) and Volunteers (1975). Both plays heavily satirised the government of Ireland . The latter depicted an archaeological excavation on the day before the site was turned over to a hotel developer, using Dublin's Wood Quay controversy as its contemporary point of reference. The play's title refers to
335-688: A Brechtian structural alienation and choric figures in Freedom of the City , metacharacters existing in a collective unconscious Limbo in Living Quarters . These experiments came to fruition in Faith Healer . Later in Friel's career, such experimental aspects became buried beneath the surface of more seemingly realist plays like Translations (1980) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990); however, avant-garde techniques remain
402-600: A Special Issue to commemorate the occasion with seven articles devoted to the playwright. The Gate Theatre staged three plays ( Faith Healer, The Yalta Game, and Afterplay ) for several weeks in September. In the midst of the Gate's productions, the Abbey Theatre presented "A Birthday Celebration for Brian Friel," on 13 September 2009. Although not inclined to seek publicity, Friel attended the performance amid regular seating, received
469-412: A birth name of Brian Patrick Ó'Friel and a birth date of 9 January. Elsewhere his birth name is given as Bernard Patrick Friel (allegedly on the grounds that "Brian" was not recognised by the registrar as an acceptable forename), and he had a second birth certificate which gave his birth date as 10 January. In life, he was known simply as Brian Friel and celebrated his birthday on 9 January. His father
536-582: A cake while the audience sang "Happy Birthday," and mingled with well-wishers afterwards. The Abbey event was an evening of staged readings (excerpts from Philadelphia, Here I Come! , Translations, and Dancing at Lughnasa ), the performance of Friel-specific songs and nocturnes, and readings by Thomas Kilroy and Seamus Heaney. The National Library of Ireland houses the 160 boxes of The Brian Friel papers, containing notebooks, manuscripts, playbills, correspondence, contracts, unpublished manuscripts, programmes, production photos, articles, uncollected essays, and
603-569: A career of more than a half-century. He was elected to the honorary position of Saoi of Aosdána . His plays were commonly produced on Broadway in New York City throughout this time, as well as in Ireland and the UK. In 1980 Friel co-founded Field Day Theatre Company and his play Translations was the company's first production. With Field Day, Friel collaborated with Seamus Heaney , 1995 recipient of
670-699: A few of the Irish know English. Translations went on to be one of the most translated and staged of all plays in the latter 20th century, performed in Estonia, Iceland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, along with most of the world's English-speaking countries (including South Africa, Canada, the U.S. and Australia). It won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize for 1985. Neil Jordan completed
737-480: A fundamental aspect of Friel's work into his late career. Translations was premiered in 1980 at Guildhall , Derry by the Field Day Theatre Company, with Stephen Rea, Liam Neeson, and Ray MacAnally. Set in 1833, it is a play about language, the meeting of English and Irish cultures, the looming Great Famine , the coming of a free national school system that will eliminate the traditional hedge schools,
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#1733093233792804-475: A group of Irish Republican Army detainees who have been indefinitely interned by the Irish government, and the term Volunteer is both ironic, in that as prisoners they have no free will, and political, in that the IRA used the term to refer to its members. Using the site as a physical metaphor for the nation's history, the play's action examines how Irish history has been commodified, sanitized, and oversimplified to fit
871-415: A little extra money for the household. They also help Maggie to keep house. Maggie and Christina (Michael's mother) have no income at all. Michael is seven years old and plays in and around the cottage. All the drama takes place in the sisters' cottage or in the yard just outside, with events from town and beyond being reported either as they happen or as reminiscence. Recently returned home after 25 years
938-481: A manner that has attracted many comparisons to the work of Chekhov. Living Quarters (1977), a play that examines the suicide of a domineering father, is a retelling of the Theseus/Hippolytus myth in a contemporary Irish setting. This play, with its focus on several sisters and their ne'er-do-well brother, serves as a type of preparation for Friel's more successful Aristocrats (1979), a Chekhovian study of
1005-612: A new production of the play at the Gate Theatre . The cast included Aisling O'Neill as Chris, Derbhle Crotty as Maggie, Catherine Walsh as Agnes, Dawn Bradfield as Rose, Andrea Irvine as Kate with John Kavanagh, Peter Gowen and Ben Price. In 2009, the Old Vic Theatre in London presented a well-received production of the play starring Sorcha Cusack , Niamh Cusack , Sinéad Cusack and Andrea Corr . Second Age Theatre Company presented
1072-519: A new production of the play starting on 19 October 2011, directed by artistic director Charlotte Moore, billed as the 20th Anniversary Production . Ciaran O'Reilly was Michael; Annabel Hagg as Chris; Jo Kinsella – Maggie; Rachel Pickup – Agnes; Aedin Moloney – Rose; Orlagh Cassidy – Kate; Michael Countryman – Jack; and Kevin Collins as Gerry. The Rome Savoyards theatre company staged an original production of
1139-484: A once-influential family's financial collapse and, perhaps, social liberation from the aristocratic myths that have constrained the children. Aristocrats was the first of three plays premiered over a period of eighteen months which would come to define Friel's career as a dramatist, the others being Faith Healer (1979) and Translations (1980). Faith Healer is a series of four conflicting monologues delivered by dead and living characters who struggle to understand
1206-601: A revival of the play which toured Ireland as part of a National Tour. Directed by David Horan, the cast included Donna Dent, Susannah de Wrixon, Maeve Fitzgerald, Kate Nic Chonaonaigh and Marie Ruane. In February to April 2011, Alastair Whatley directed a production for the Original Theatre Company that toured the UK. The cast included Victoria Carling , Mairead Conneely, Patricia Gannon, Siobhan O'Kelly, Daragh O'Malley , Bronagh Taggart, Paul Westwood and Alastair Whatley. The Irish Repertory Theatre, Manhattan, staged
1273-497: A screenplay for a film version of Translations that was never produced. Friel commented on Translations : "The play has to do with language and only language. And if it becomes overwhelmed by that political element, it is lost." Despite growing fame and success, the 1980s is considered Friel's artistic "Gap" as he published so few original works for the stage: Translations in 1980, The Communication Cord in 1982, and Making History in 1988. Privately, Friel complained both of
1340-401: A series of monologues delivered on an empty stage by characters who have no interaction. This play is about a blind woman in Ballybeg who constructed for herself an independent life rich in friendships and sensual fulfillment, and her ill-fated encounter with two men who destroy it and cause her madness: Frank, the man she marries who becomes convinced that she can only be complete when her vision
1407-646: A teacher at St. Joseph's Training College, Belfast in Belfast , 1949–1950. He married Anne Morrison in 1954; they had four daughters and one son. Between 1950 and 1960, he worked as a maths teacher in the Derry primary and intermediate school system, taking leave in 1960 to pursue a career as a writer, living off his savings. In the late 1960s, the Friels moved from Derry to Muff, County Donegal, before settling outside Greencastle , County Donegal. Friel supported Irish nationalism and
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#17330932337921474-573: A vast collection of ephemera relating to Friel's career and creative process from 1959 through 2000. It does not contain his Irish Press articles, which can be found in the Dublin and Belfast newspaper libraries. In 2011, an additional set of Friel's papers were made available in the National Library of Ireland. These additional papers consist mainly of archival materials dating between 2000 and 2010. Dancing at Lughnasa Dancing at Lughnasa
1541-469: Is Welsh . He is a charming yet unreliable man, always clowning . He is a travelling salesman who sells gramophones . He visits rarely and always unannounced. A radio nicknamed " Marconi ", which works only intermittently, brings 1930s dance and traditional Irish folk music into the home at rather random moments and then, equally randomly, ceases to play. This leads the women into sudden outbursts of wild dancing. The poverty and financial insecurity of
1608-560: Is a 1990 play by dramatist Brian Friel set in County Donegal , Ireland in August 1936 in the fictional town of Ballybeg . It is a memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator. He recounts the summer in his aunts' cottage when he was seven years old. This play is loosely based on the lives of Friel's mother and aunts who lived in Glenties , a small town in
1675-578: Is his first play directly considering the Protestant experience. In this work, he considers the first hints of the waning of Ascendancy authority during the summer of 1878, the year before Charles Stuart Parnell became president of the Land League and initiated the Land Wars. After a sold-out season at the Gate Theatre in Dublin, it transferred to London's West End on 25 May 2005, making its American premiere at
1742-561: Is restored, and Mr. Rice, a once-renowned eye surgeon who uses Molly to restore his career. In a note in the programme of the 1996 Broadway production, Friel says that the story was inspired in part by Oliver Sacks 's essay " To See and Not See ". Molly Sweeney received its first performance on August 9, 1994, at the Gate Theatre , Dublin . It was directed by Friel and featured Catherine Byrne as Molly, Mark Lambert as Frank Sweeney, and T. P. McKenna as Mr. Rice. It received its American premiere in 1996 in an Off Broadway production at
1809-494: Is their brother Jack, a priest who has lived as a missionary in a leper colony in a remote village called Ryanga in Uganda . He is suffering from malaria and has trouble remembering many things, including the sisters' names and his English vocabulary. It becomes clear that he has " gone native " and abandoned much of his Catholicism during his time there. This may be the real reason he has been sent home. Gerry, Michael's father,
1876-582: The Guthrie Theater in September 2007. In 1989, BBC Radio launched a "Brian Friel Season", a six-play series devoted to his work; he was the first living playwright to receive such an honour. In 1999 (April–August), Friel's 70th birthday was celebrated in Dublin with the Friel Festival, during which ten of his plays were staged or presented as dramatic readings throughout Dublin. A conference, National Library exhibition, film screenings, pre-show talks, and
1943-650: The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play . It was also adapted into a film , starring Meryl Streep , directed by Pat O'Connor , script by Frank McGuinness . Friel was born in 1929 at Knockmoyle , Northern Ireland, before the family moved to nearby Killyclogher, both places close to Omagh in County Tyrone. His exact birth date and name are ambiguous. The parish register lists
2010-790: The Nobel Prize in Literature . Heaney and Friel first became friends after Friel sent the young poet a letter following publication of his book Death of a Naturalist . Friel was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters , the British Royal Society of Literature and the Irish Academy of Letters. He was appointed to Seanad Éireann in 1987 and served until 1989. In later years, Dancing at Lughnasa reinvigorated Friel's oeuvre, bringing him Tony Awards (including Best Play ),
2077-509: The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association against the policy of internment on 13 January 1972, an event that would become known as Bloody Sunday . During the march, British troops from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment opened fire on the marchers, killing 14 people and wounding a further 26. His personal experience of being fired at by soldiers during the march greatly affected the drafting of The Freedom of
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2144-799: The Roundabout Theatre . Catherine Byrne again starred as Molly, Alfred Molina played her husband Frank, and Jason Robards played Mr. Rice. It won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play of the 1996 season. The play was revived at the Print Room theatre in west London in 2013, with Dorothy Duffy starring as Molly. The play was in large part inspired by the essay by neurologist Oliver Sacks , "To See and Not See", published in An Anthropologist on Mars . Brian Friel Brian Patrick Friel (c. 9 January 1929 – 2 October 2015)
2211-634: The Tony Award for Best Play as well as a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Play. The original cast included Frances Tomelty and later Rosaleen Linehan as Kate, Anita Reeves as Maggie, Bríd Ní Neachtain as Rose, Bríd Brennan as Agnes, Catherine Byrne as Chris, Gerard McSorley as Michael, Paul Herzberg and later Stephen Dillane as Gerry Evans and Barry McGovern and later Alec McCowen as Fr. Jack. The original Broadway cast included Rosaleen Linehan as Kate, Dearbhla Molloy as Maggie, Bríd Ní Neachtain as Rose, Bríd Brennan as Agnes (winning
2278-498: The 75th birthday of Friel's wife in County Donegal, suffered a stroke on the morning after the celebration. In November 2008, The Queen's University of Belfast announced its intention to build a new theatre complex and research centre, to be named The Brian Friel Theatre and Centre for Theatre Research . Friel attended its opening in 2009. Friel's 80th birthday fell in 2009. The journal Irish Theatre International published
2345-490: The Catholic Church. The opening of a knitwear factory in the village has killed off the hand-knitted glove cottage industry that has been the livelihood of Agnes and Rose. The village priest has told Kate that there are insufficient pupils at the school for her to continue in her post in the coming school year in September. She suspects that the real reason is her brother Jack, whose heretical views have become known to
2412-568: The Church and have tainted her by association. There is a sense that the close home life the women have known since childhood is about to be torn apart. The narrator, the adult Michael, tells us this is indeed what happens. The play was originally presented at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1990. It transferred to London's National Theatre in 1991, winning the Olivier Award for Best Play, and subsequently to Broadway's Plymouth Theatre where it won
2479-488: The City as a heavily political play. In the interview, Friel recalled: "It was really a shattering experience that the British army , this disciplined instrument, would go in as they did that time and shoot thirteen people... to have to throw yourself on the ground because people are firing at you is really a terrifying experience." By the mid-1970s, Friel had moved away from overtly political plays to examine family dynamics in
2546-587: The Dublin Theatre Festival, which toured both North and South of Ireland, with a cast featuring Catherine Cusack, Catherine McCormack and Mary Murray. Directed by Annabelle Comyn. 2023 London Revival The National Theatre in London presented a production of the play starring Louisa Harland as Agnes, Bláithín Mac Gabhann as Rose, Siobhán McSweeney as Maggie, Justine Mitchell as Kate, Ardal O'Hanlon as Jack, Alison Oliver as Chris, Tom Riley as Gerry, and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor as Michael. The director
2613-560: The English expedition to convert all Irish place names into English, and the crossed love between an Irish woman who speaks no English and an English soldier who speaks no Irish. It was an instant success. The innovative conceit of the play is to stage two language communities (the Gaelic and the English), which have few and very limited ways to speak to each other, for the English know no Irish, while only
2680-538: The Friel/Gate Festival in September 2009) and had its world premiere at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. The most innovative work of Friel's late period is Performances (2003). A graduate researching the impact of Leoš Janáček 's platonic love for Kamila Stosslova on his work playfully and passionately argues with the composer, who appears to host her at his artistic retreat more than 70 years after his death; all
2747-499: The Irish Baile Beag , meaning "Small Town"). There are fourteen such plays: Philadelphia, Here I Come! , Crystal and Fox , The Gentle Island , Living Quarters , Faith Healer , Aristocrats , Translations , The Communication Cord , Dancing at Lughnasa , Wonderful Tennessee , Molly Sweeney , Give Me Your Answer Do! and The Home Place , while the seminal event of Faith Healer takes place in
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2814-557: The Irish journalist Sean Ward even referred to him in an Irish Press article as one of the Abbey Theatre's "rejects". Friel's play, The Enemy Within (1962) enjoyed success, despite only being on the Abbey stage for 9 performances. Belfast's Lyric Theatre revived it in September 1963 and the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service and Radio Éireann both aired it in 1963. Although Friel later withdrew The Blind Mice (1963), it
2881-465: The Name for Blackstaff Press (1986), and Charles Macklin's play The London Vertigo in 1990. Friel's decision to premiere Dancing at Lughnasa at the Abbey Theatre rather than as a Field Day production initiated his evolution away from involvement with Field Day, and he formally resigned as a director in 1994. Friel returned to a position of Irish theatrical dominance during the 1990s, particularly with
2948-673: The Sea (1966). These were followed by A Doubtful Paradise , his first stage play, produced by the Ulster Group Theatre in late August 1960. Friel also wrote 59 articles for The Irish Press , a Dublin-based party-political newspaper, from April 1962 to August 1963; this series included short stories, political editorials on life in Northern Ireland and Donegal, his travels to Dublin and New York City, and his childhood memories of Derry, Omagh, Belfast, and Donegal. Early in Friel's career,
3015-525: The Tyrone Guthrie Theatre, Friel wrote Philadelphia Here I Come! (1964). The play made him instantly famous in Dublin, London, and New York. The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966), and Lovers (1967) were both successful in Ireland, with Lovers also popular in The United States. Despite Friel's successes in playwriting , Friel in the period saw himself as primarily a short story writer, in
3082-459: The bulk of his estate to his wife, he bequeathed a house or apartment to each of his living children, and shared his literary estate between them and the children of Patricia. His literary executors were his wife and a friend, the former director for literature at the Arts Council of England, Paul McKeone. A common setting for Friel's plays is in or around the fictional town of " Ballybeg " (from
3149-399: The existence of two "hard-core" pornographic novels based upon the writer's daughter forces all present to reassess. Entering his eighth decade, Friel found it difficult to maintain the writing pace that he returned to in the 1990s; indeed, between 1997 and 2003 he produced only the very short one-act plays "The Bear" (2002), "The Yalta Game" (2001), and "Afterplay" (2002), all published under
3216-520: The festival of Lughnasadh , the Celtic harvest festival. The play describes a bitter harvest for the Mundy sisters, a time of reaping what has been sown. The five Mundy sisters (Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rosie, and Christina), all unmarried, live in a cottage outside of Ballybeg. The oldest, Kate, is a school teacher , the only one with a well-paid job. Agnes and Rose knit gloves to be sold in town, thereby earning
3283-510: The gold Torc, Friel quipped: "I knew that being made a Saoi, really getting this award, is extreme unction; it is a final anointment—Aosdana's last rites." Only five members of Aosdána could hold this honour at the time, and Friel joined fellow Saoithe Louis le Brocquy , Benedict Kiely , Seamus Heaney and Anthony Cronin . In August 2006, Heaney (also a friend of the Friels) who had been in attendance at
3350-749: The isolated and backward town that Gar flees in the 1964 Philadelphia, Here I Come! to the prosperous and multicultural small city of Molly Sweeney (1994) and Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997), where the characters have health clubs, ethnic restaurants, and regular flights to the world's major cities. Friel's first radio plays were produced by Ronald Mason for the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service in 1958: A Sort of Freedom (16 January 1958) and To This Hard House (24 April 1958). Friel began writing short stories for The New Yorker in 1959 and subsequently published two well-received collections: The Saucer of Larks (1962) and The Gold in
3417-414: The launching of a special issue of The Irish University Review devoted to the playwright ran in conjunction with the festival. Also in 1999, The Irish Times extended him the honour of a lifetime achievement award. On 22 February 2006, President Mary McAleese presented Friel with a gold torc in recognition of his election to the position of Saoi by his fellow members of Aosdána . On acceptance of
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#17330932337923484-493: The life and death of Frank Hardy, the play's itinerant healer who can neither understand nor command his unreliable powers, and the lives sacrificed to his destructive charismatic life. Many of Friel's earlier plays had incorporated assertively avant garde techniques: splitting the main character Gar into two actors in Philadelphia, Here I Come! , portraying dead characters in "Winners" of Lovers, Freedom , and Living Quarters ,
3551-403: The lives and careers of two novelists and friends who pursued different paths; one writing shallow, popular works, the other writing works that refuse to conform to popular tastes. After an American university pays a small fortune for the popular writer's papers, the same collector arrives to review the manuscripts of his friend. The collector prepares to announce his findings at a dinner party when
3618-452: The play directed by Sandra Provost at the 'Teatro San Genesio' from February 4 to February 9 to great acclaim. William O'Neill was Michael; Lydia O'Kane - Chris; Gabriella Spadaro - Maggie; Carolyn Gouger - Agnes; Fabiana De Rose - Rose; Shelagh Stuchbery - Kate; Michael Fitzpatrick - Jack and Shane Harnett - Gerry. The Lyric Theatre in Belfast presented a revival of the play in association with
3685-559: The political needs of society. By 1968, Friel was again living in Derry, a hotbed of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement , where incidents such as the Battle of the Bogside inspired Friel's choice to write a new play set in the city. The play Friel began drafting in Derry would eventually become The Freedom of the City (1973). Defying a government ban, Friel marched with members of
3752-638: The release of Dancing at Lughnasa at the turn of the decade. Partly modelled on The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams , it is set in the late summer of 1936 and loosely based on the lives of Friel's mother and aunts who lived in Glenties, on the west coast of Donegal. Probably Friel's most successful play, it premiered at the Abbey Theatre , transferred to London's West End , and went on to Broadway. On Broadway, it won three Tony Awards in 1992, including Best Play. A film version, starring Meryl Streep , soon followed. Friel had been thinking about writing
3819-466: The sisters is a constant theme. So are their unfulfilled lives: none of the sisters has married, although it is clear that they have had suitors whom they fondly remember. There is a tension between the strict and proper behaviour demanded by the Catholic Church , voiced most stridently by the upright Kate, and the unbridled emotional paganism of the local people in the "back hills" of Donegal and in
3886-547: The south-west of County Donegal . Set in the summer of 1936, the play depicts the late summer days when love briefly seems possible for five of the Mundy sisters (Maggie, Chris, Agnes, Rose, and Kate) and the family welcomes home the frail elder brother, Jack, who has returned from a life as a missionary in Africa. However, as the summer ends, the family foresees the sadness and economic privations under which they will suffer as all hopes fade. The play takes place in early August, around
3953-461: The title Three Plays After (2002). The latter two plays stage Friel's continued fascination with Chekhov's work. "The Yalta Game" is concerned with Chekhov's story "The Lady with the Lapdog," "Afterplay" is an imagining of a near-romantic meeting between Andrey Prozorov of Chekhov's Three Sisters and Sonya Serebriakova of his Uncle Vanya . It has been revived several times (including being part of
4020-400: The town. These plays present an extended history of this imagined community, with Translations and The Home Place set in the nineteenth century, and Dancing at Lughnasa in the 1930s. With the other plays set in "the present" but written throughout the playwright's career from the early 1960s through the late 1990s, the audience is presented with the evolution of rural Irish society, from
4087-580: The tribal people of Uganda. There is a possibility that Gerry is serious this time about his marriage proposal to Christina. On this visit, he says he is going to join the International brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War , not from any ideological commitment but because he wants adventure. There is a similar tension here between the "godless" forces he wants to join and the forces of Franco against which he will be fighting, which are supported by
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#17330932337924154-514: The while, the Alba String Quartet 's players intrude on the dialogue, warm up, then perform the first two movements of Janáček's Second String Quartet in a tableau that ends the play. The Home Place (2005), focusing on the ageing Christopher Gore and the last of Friel's plays set in Ballybeg, was also his final full-scale work. Although Friel had written plays about the Catholic gentry, this
4221-494: The work required managing Field Day (granting written and live interviews, casting, arranging tours, etc.) and of his fear that he was "trying to impose a 'Field Day' political atmosphere" on his work. However, this is also a period during which he worked on several minor projects that filled out the decade: a translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters (1981), an adaptation of Turgenev's novel Fathers and Sons (1987), an edition of Charles McGlinchey's memoirs entitled The Last of
4288-581: Was Patrick Friel, a primary school teacher and later a councillor on Londonderry Corporation, the local city council in Derry . Friel's mother was Mary (née McLoone), postmistress of Glenties , County Donegal . The family moved to Derry when Friel was ten years old. There he attended St Columb's College (the same school attended by Seamus Heaney , John Hume , Seamus Deane , Phil Coulter , Eamonn McCann and Paul Brady ). Friel received his B.A. from St Patrick's College, Maynooth (1945–1948), and qualified as
4355-682: Was a member of the Nationalist Party . Taoiseach Charles Haughey nominated Friel to serve as a member of Seanad Éireann (the Irish Senate) in 1987, where he served until 1989. After a long illness, Friel died on 2 October 2015 in Greencastle and is buried in the cemetery in Glenties , also in Donegal. He was survived by his wife Anne and children Mary, Judy, Sally and David. Another daughter, Patricia ("Paddy"), predeceased him. While leaving
4422-624: Was an Irish dramatist, short story writer and founder of the Field Day Theatre Company . He had been considered one of the greatest living English-language dramatists. He has been likened to an "Irish Chekhov " and described as "the universally accented voice of Ireland". His plays have been compared favourably to those of contemporaries such as Samuel Beckett , Arthur Miller , Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams . Recognised for early works such as Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Faith Healer , Friel had 24 plays published in
4489-552: Was by far the most successful play of his very early period, playing for 6 weeks at Dublin's Eblana Theatre, revived by the Lyric, and broadcast by Radio Éireann and the BBC Home Service almost ten times by 1967. Friel had a short stint as "observer" at Tyrone Guthrie's theater in early-1960s Minneapolis; he remarked on it as "enabling" in that it gave him "courage and daring to attempt things". Shortly after returning from his time at
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