Kirjahaku

This second collection of Brian Friel's plays includes some of his most acclaimed work for the stage. The plays included are Dancing at Lughnasa, Fathers and Sons, Making History, Wonderful Tennessee and Molly Sweeney. The collection is introduced by Christopher Murray.

This marks the first of five volumes collecting together the complete work of Brian Friel. The Enemy Within (1962) Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964)The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966) Lovers (Winners and Losers) (1967) Crystal and Fox (1968) The Gentle Island (1971)

This third collection of Brian Friel's work contains:Three Sisters (Chekhov) (1981)The Communication Cord (1982) Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) (1987) Making History (1988) Dancing at Lughnasa (1990)

This fourth collection of Brian Friel's work contains:The London Vertigo (after Macklin) (1992) (January)A Month in the Country (after Turgenev) (1992) (August) Wonderful Tennessee (1993) Molly Sweeney (1994) Give Me Your Answer, Do! (1997)

This fifth collection of Brian Friel's work contains: Uncle Vanya (after Chekhov) (1998) The Yalta Game (after Chekhov) (2001) The Bear (after Chekhov) (2002) Afterplay (after 2002) Performances (2003) The Home Place (2005) Hedda Gabler (after Ibsen) (2005)

This second collection of Brian Friel's work contains:The Freedom of the City (1973) Volunteers (1975) Living Quarters (1977) Aristocrats (1979) (March) Faith Healer (1979) (April) Translations (1980)

"Dispassionate eloquence and psychological honesty.... Brian Friel's writing has such vitality and warmth, such kindly accuracy of observation." - London Sunday Times From one of Ireland's best living playwrights, this striking piece of dramatic writing is a daring piece of theater. Keeping the play's three characters on stage at all times to speak directly to the audience, Brian Friel presents three points of view to the same intriguing tale. Molly herself, blind since she was an infant, tells of her world before and after an operation to try to restore her sight. Her husband, itinerant champion of good causes, talks of his passion to help her. Her once famous eye surgeon, now a whiskey-sodden recluse in Donegal, sees the operation as his chance to reclaim his reputation. Each of their voices interweaves, threading in and out with details, spinning a lush and sensate narrative, and carrying us effortlessly to an unexpected and poignant conclusion. Deceptively simple, yet richly multilayered--combining both an insightful story about the way we perceive our existence with an allegory for our times--Molly Sweeney is an Irish storyteller's art to create an unforgettable theater piece, painting scenery and rousing emotions with nothing more than the simple purity of beautifully rendered words.

Fed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and the humiliating job in his father's grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O'Donnell has accepted his aunt's invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg.With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.

The action takes place in late August 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal. In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes of cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and rendered into English. In examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group, Brian Friel skilfully reveals the far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative.

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after 25 years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christian and pagan, of which they are a part. It won the 1991 Olivier Award for Best Play of the Year and the Evening Standard Award for Best Play, the 1992 Tony Award for Best Play and New York Drama Critics' Circle award for Best Play.

The central character of this play is Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who led an Irish and Spanish alliance against the armies of Elizabeth I in an attempt to drive the English out of Ireland. The action takes place before and after the Battle of Kinsale, at which the alliance was defeated: with O'Neill at home in Dungannon, as a fugitive in the mountains, and finally exiled in Rome. In his handling of this momentous episode Brian Friel has avoided the conventions of 'historical drama' to produce a play about history, the continuing process.

The year is 1878. The widowed Christopher Gore, his son David and their housekeeper Margaret, the woman with whom they are both in love, live at The Lodge in Ballybeg. But in this era of unrest at the dawn of Home Rule, their seemingly serene life is threatened by the arrival of Christopher's English cousin, who unwittingly ignites deep animosity among the villagers of Ballybeg. The Home Place premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in February 2005.

A profound, harrowing excavation of the past that stands amongst Brian Friel's masterpieces.Faith healer - faith healing. A craft without an apprenticeship, a ministry without responsibility, a vocation without a ministry.Frank Hardy, a travelling healer, offers the promise of redemption to the sick. But his is an unreliable gift, a dangerous calling, bringing him into conflict with his wife, Grace, and his manager, Teddy.Faith Healer premiered at the Longacre Theatre, New York, 1979.'The night of Faith Healer is one that still blazes in recollection for me, as religious experiences of art do. And it became a sort of touchstone for me . . . for defining the elusiveness of great art and the pain of the artist who creates it.' BEN BRANTLEY, NEW YORK TIMES'The writing is beautiful, supple, rhythmical, charged with the slow, sure throb of despair and enchantment . . . Brian Friel is the most profound and poetic of contemporary Irish dramatists.' Observer

A profound, luminous masterpiece by one of Ireland's greatest playwrights.This edition was published in 2023 with a beautifully redesigned text and cover, to coincide with the National Theatre' revival. It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five adult Mundy sisters; their older brother, a missionary priest returned from Uganda; and the youngest sister's seven-year-old son, Michael. Over the course of two days in the family's life, Brian Friel evokes not only the interior world of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape - public and private, Christian and pagan - of which they are nonetheless a part.'There is no doubting we are in the thrall of as masterly a dramatist as the theatre possesses.' The Times

Premiered at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, this multi-award-winning play is about five impoverished spinster sisters in a remote part of County Donegal in 1936. With them live Michael, seven-year-old son of the youngest sister, and Jack, the sisters' elder brother, a missionary priest newly returned from Africa. The even's of that summer are narrated in recall by the adult Michael, unfolding a tender study of these women's lives.

Set in Londonderry in 1970, this gripping drama by the acclaimed author of Faith Healer and Translations explores the ongoing Irish "troubles" that plague the country to this day.

Drama / 9 m., 6 f. / Var. sets. In rural Russia in the mid nineteenth century, a brilliant, anarchic young medical student arrives at the provincial family villa of his best friend, Arkady, for the summer vacation. He wants to despise the family for their imperturbable complacency and bourgeois effeteness, but he is tormented by conflicting emotions. His desperate action has tragic consequences. "The evening leaves you pondering not just the play's political implications but the ageless tragedy of parent child relationship." London Guardian . "Drama at its most stimulating and eloquent...has the density, complexity and richness of a great 19th century novel without the usual creaking stage mechanism of dramatized fiction." N.Y. Daily News. "A fine, solid piece of drama not just about the divisions between the different generations but also about nihilism, revolution and the immutability of love." Time Out. FEE: $75 per performance.

Contents: Philadelphia, Here I Come; The Freedom of the City; Living Quarters; Aristocrats; Faith Healer; Translations Brian Friel was born in County Tyrone in 1929 and worked as a teacher before turning to full-time writing in 1960. His first stage success was in 1964 with Philadelphia, Here I Come, which established his claim as heir to such distinguished predecessors as Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, and Behan. In 1979 he and actor Stephen Rea formed the Field Day Theatre Company, whose first theatrical production was Friel's Translations in 1980.Also included in this selection are The Freedom of the City, set in Londonderry in 1970; Living Quarters, which Desmond MacAvok in the Evening Presscalled "one of the most fascinating and, in the end, truly moving evenings. . .in Irish Theatre"; Faith Healer, a metaphoric depiction of the artist and his gift' and Aristocrats, "as fine and as stimulating and as warm a piece of writing as had appeared on the Irish stage for many years," according to David Nowland, the Irish Times.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'A solid gold treat from top to tail. A tremendous set of stories by the great Irish playwright' John Self, The Observer A fake! A quack! A charlatan! Get a grip on yourself, woman! We’ll say another rosary and then I’ll leave you home.’Stories of Ireland is a brilliant, colourful compendium of mid-century Irish experience from one of Ireland’s greatest ever writers, Brian Friel. Demonstrating all of Friel’s peerless instinct for voice, scene, and the uncanny mystery found in the everyday, these tales tell of beauty, struggle and discovery: from the drowning of a man in the bog-black waters of Lough Keeragh, to the camaraderie of teenage potato gathers in County Tyrone, and from the careful work of the German War Graves Commission in Glenn na fuiseog, to trawlermen’s talk of sunken gold off the coast of Donegal.Selected by Friel himself, and introduced by acclaimed author Louise Kennedy, this charming, heartful collection truly offers some of the best stories ever written.'Some of the best stories ever written. They are everything short stories should be – deft, skilfully written, funny and quite often breathlessly sad' Edna O'Brien