Latest news with #BrianFriel
Extra.ie
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Gate Theatre to bring classic show to 3Olympia this summer
Brian Friel's classic play Dancing at Lughnasa is set to have a run at the 3Olympia Theatre from June 27 to July 26. Produced by the Gate Theatre, which previously staged the show in a sold-out run last year, the revival marks the first time a Gate show has been presented on the 3Olympia stage in 35 years, since Sean OCasey's Juno and the Paycock in 1990. 'We are thrilled to rekindle our historic relationship with the Olympia Theatre', said Gate Theatre Executive Director Colm O'Callaghan. 'Our strategic vision is that of an 'Open Gate' where everyone has access to great theatre, and playing to 3Olympias summer audiences is a great way to help us realise this and to expand our audience.' O'Callaghan also added: 'Collaborating with 3Olympia also means that our own stage is available to deliver on other key strategic goals such as premiering contemporary international plays.' The critically acclaimed production will be once again directed by Caroline Byrne, and features a cast including Lauren Farrell, Peter Gowen, and Pauline Hutton. Set in 1936 in the fictional Donegal town of Ballybeg, Dancing at Lughnasa follows the lives of the five Mundy sisters. The play originally premiered in 1990 at the Abbey Theatre and has since become one of Friels most celebrated plays. Considered one of the greatest Irish playwrights of all time, Friel's body of work also includes other classics such as Translations , Philadelphia Here I Come! , and Faith Healer . Tickets for Dancing at Lughnasa are on sale now and can be found here.
Irish Times
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Making History Friel review: Everyman production throws a lot at Brian Friel's clunky play
Making History Everyman, Cork ★★★☆☆ There has been no underestimating the attraction of recognisable topography since the melodramas of the 18th century. Richard Brinsley Sheridan sent urbanites roaming Bath's historic terraces and London's theatre district. Dion Boucicault had noble Irishmen diving into Muckross Lake and meeting amid monastery ruins in Glendalough. When, during the Everyman's new production, a group of 16th-century clansmen at their Tyrone base baulk at the decision of Spanish reinforcements to land in Cork, their cluelessness induces laughter in the auditorium. 'I think I heard some mention of Kinsale,' one strategist says. 'Never heard of it,' comes the reply. Everyman: Des Kennedy's production of Making History, by Brian Friel. Photograph: Marcin Lewandowski The running gag of Ulstermen struggling with the geography of the south – 'The Ballyhoura Mountains ... they're in Co Cork, aren't they?' – in Making History is an astute observation by the theatre's new artistic director, Des Kennedy, but a bigger swing is being played here: can something be made of Brian Friel's 1988 play, a difficult artefact, conceived during the Troubles, that deflates romantic myths around the Flight of the Earls? [ 'People forget that Brian Friel was a radical' Opens in new window ] This version of Gaelic Ireland isn't what you'd expect. Inside a grand diningroom, a logistics-orientated secretary tries to tick through a list of social commitments – 'The invitation came the day you left. I said you'd be there' – while a smartly dressed Hugh O'Neill, Irish lord and eventual leader of a confederacy against the English crown, prefers the purity of living in the present – 'This jacket. I should have got it in maroon.' READ MORE In this zingy back-and-forth, nicely judged by Stephen O'Leary and Aaron McCusker, Friel's play seems to present these important historical figures as a screwball-comedy duo. Into the mix arrives Archbishop Lombard (mostly a cipher for the play's exposition and ideas, delivered as well as can be by Ray Scannell), who announces that Spain is interested in joining their battle against England. O'Neill's head isn't exactly in the game; to everyone's horror he has just eloped with a Protestant. Everyman: Des Kennedy's production of Making History, by Brian Friel. Photograph: Marcin Lewandowski Locating the disorganised leaders of the Irish rebellion in a drawingroom comedy is the play's radical idea, but it is soon derailed by Friel's insistent metacommentary on how things are remembered – an instinct that often leads to long-winded revelations solicited without tension. Did you know O'Neill still has affections for the English politician who raised him? Or that he once fought against his fellow Gaels? Kennedy's production fights hard to share Friel's vision of history as a conspiracy, with debris from the Battle of Kinsale removed by figures wearing hazmat suits in Catherine Fay's costuming. After fatiguing war reports, the play finds some grit in a relocation to Rome, where an older O'Neill argues with Lombard about how to record the Nine Years' War in a manuscript (Denis Conway and Peter Gowan, making the best of an intellectual debate). 'People think they just want to know the facts, but what they really want is a story,' Lombard says. On that count, Making History isn't one for the books. Making History is at the Everyman , Cork, until Saturday, April 26th
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Stories of Ireland by Brian Friel review – a solid gold treat
Before he became known as one of the greatest playwrights of the last century, Brian Friel wrote short stories, mainly for the New Yorker. Two collections published in the 1960s were filleted by Friel himself for a Selected Stories in 1979, which is now retitled and reissued – and it is a solid gold treat from top to tail. Friel as a story writer is funnier than John McGahern, livelier than William Trevor. The model perhaps is Frank O'Connor: witty, short tales of country folk sufficiently larger-than-life to be interesting, but keeping one foot firmly on the ground. The stories take place in Friel's stamping ground of north-west Ireland – including in the fictional town of Ballybeg, where many of his plays would be set – and filled with people eager to make a mark. In The Widowhood System, a recently widowed man determines to breed a champion racing pigeon ('With the old woman out of the road and the place to myself there's nothing to stop me now!'); in Ginger Hero, a boy who's taken up cock fighting wants to pit his bird against the local ace. 'Are you mad?' asks his friend. 'That's not a cock – that's an ostrich!' Naturally, the dialogue is spot-on, but Friel captures people expertly in description too. In Foundry House, perhaps the best story here, an old man listens in fearful awe to a tape recording of his daughter's voice that she's sent from Rhodesia. 'Mr Bernard could not move himself to face the recorder but his eyes were on it, the large, startled eyes of a horse.' Friel can switch between modes – tender, surprising – in his characterisation, but the overall tone is comic. In Mr Sing My Heart's Delight, a boy's granny who lives in remote County Donegal asks him: 'Were you in a bus ever? Was it bad on the stomach, was it?' In The Illusionists, argumentative one-upmanship between a teacher and a travelling magician reaches manic heights. The only downside of reading these stories is knowing that Friel stopped writing them to concentrate on his stage work. We wouldn't want to be without his plays, but his prose fiction is just as tremendous. Stories of Ireland by Brian Friel is published by Penguin (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
