Brian Friel

The Yalta Game

Love story in duologue

1 Sep 2009

The giddiness of love, as well as the dark cynicism that can sometimes undermine it, is a thematic concern to which Brian Friel’s work frequently returns. In this loose theatrical adaptation of Chekov’s short story ‘Lady with Lapdog’, we see an…

Dancing at Lughnasa story of five sisters rural in 1936 Donegal

Citizens run marks 21st anniversary of Brian Friel's hit play

18 Mar 2011

When The Original Theatre Company’s version of Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa arrives at the Citizens Theatre in April, it will mark the 21st anniversary of its very first performance. ‘We hope that’s it’s going to really speak to people in Glasgow,…

Afterplay

Haunting Chekovian elegy

3 Sep 2009

Over the years, there have been a number of examples of dramatists borrowing characters from other writers’ works and giving them life elsewhere, but no version of this kind of experiment could be as striking as Brian Friel’s reflection on the later…

Hitlist: Theatre

Our pick of the week's theatre

20 Aug 2009

Faith Healer, The Yalta Game, Afterplay, The Overcoat, Controlled Falling Project, The Hotel, The Tartuffe/The Trial, Trilogy

Faith Healer

Faith, fate and chance

17 Aug 2009

The Gate Theatre’s opening piece in its Brian Friel mini-festival for the EIF is perhaps that author’s most complex and admired play. Its significances are so myriad that dozens of critical appraisals have attempted to fathom out its meaning. But the…

Edinburgh festival highlights: The top 30 shows

August’s finest entertainment at a glance

13 Jul 2009

We bring you a selection of the best shows at Edinburgh this year across all the festivals, including barnstorming retelling of the Goethe story Faust, former Talking Head David Byrne in experimental mood, The Wire's creator David Simon and theatre…

Brian Friel retrospective includes Faith Healer, The Yalta Game and Afterplay

Three plays by the Irish Chekov

13 Jul 2009

At the head of the pantheon of Irish dramatists there is JM Synge, there is Sean O’Casey and there is Brian Friel. As far as director Patrick Mason sees it, there is no question: Friel is Ireland’s greatest living writer. ‘It’s an amazing opus,’ he…

Living Quarters

15 Nov 2007

Brian Friel’s play of family dysfunction tells the story of a career army officer returning from a UN mission where he’s greeted as a hero. But tensions and repressions lurk within his family which, for all the comedy on the way, will lead to…

Living Quarters

1 Nov 2007

UK PREMIERE Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 17 Nov Anyone who has lived beyond a certain age may be confronted with memories of decisions taken in earlier life that are destined to haunt them, and be they something done to another or to…

Molly Sweeney

1 Nov 2007

REVIVAL Dervaig Hall, Fri 9 Nov, then touring For the eponymous middle-aged woman (Cara Kelly) in Brian Friel’s play the rituals of everyday life are suddenly and irreversibly disrupted when, having been blind for her entire life, her sight is…

Molly Sweeney preview

20 Sep 2007

Dr Oliver Sacks’ work has inspired a number of fictional stories including the 1990 film Awakenings and Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska. His paper entitled ‘To See or Not to See’, a case study of a blind man who regains his sight was the starting point for…