Posted: 10/2/15 at 8:57am
Tony winning playwright (Dancing At Lughnasa, Philadelphia, Here I Come!), Brian Friel, has died in Ireland at age 86.
Care to share your memories of his work?
Updated On: 10/2/15 at 08:57 AM
Posted: 10/2/15 at 9:08am
Two favorites - a 1988 regional production of Philadelphia, Here I Come!, where, unusually, both Gar Public and Gar Private were excellent (usually Gar Private walks away with the show, being a showier role).
2005, during a visit to London, the rest of my group chose one evening to see Jerry Springer the Opera, but I picked up cheap tickets at Leicester Square for The Home Place, starring Tom Courtenay at the Comedy (now the Harold Pinter). It was exactly the kind of play and production that's done so excellently in the UK and so poorly in NYC. A moving, intimate, fulfilling evening.
Posted: 10/2/15 at 9:34am
So many wonderful memories. My favourite was back in 1990 when I was a new theatregoer and saw the very first production of Dancing at Lughnasa at the Abbey. The set with its beautiful cornfield wreathed in golden light created magic from the moment you entered the theatre. By the time Frances Tomelty's Aunt Kate took Barry McGovern's Father Jack by the elbow and gently steered him through the cornfield at the interval everyone knew they were seeing the birth of a masterpiece. I have never forgotten that magical June evening and when we left the theatre the same golden light suffused the city at sunset. Farewell Master Friel - the beauty and magic you created will live on forever.
Updated On: 10/2/15 at 09:34 AM
Posted: 10/2/15 at 1:14pm
I thought the Irish Rep did a great job with FREEDOM OF THE CITY back in 2012. But it was when I saw ARISTOCRATS in Dublin a little over a year ago -- where the servants spoke with an Irish brogue but the gentry had a subtle "West Brit" accent -- that I realized what a master he was of the English language.
Posted: 10/2/15 at 5:49pm
Not to mention Translations where he convinced us that the Irish characters were speaking Irish and the English, English with everyone speaking in English. Creating both Gar Public and Gar Private must have been hugely innovative when Philadelphia, Here I Come! was new.
