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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2007

Anthony Roche
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
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Summary

Excepting Beckett (who remains a special case), Brian Friel is the most important Irish playwright in terms both of dramatic achievement and cultural importance to have emerged since the Abbey Theatre's heyday. For all of the Irish Theatre Movement's fame worldwide, the canon of its enduring works is small: J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (1907) and Sean O'Casey's Dublin trilogy. Brendan Behan promised much in the 1950s but the role of Stage Irishman took over and he died young; Samuel Beckett wrote his plays in French and in a context which denied any hint of the local. While other major contemporary Irish playwrights from Friel's generation have made a reputation in their own country (Tom Murphy, Thomas Kilroy, John B. Keane), almost without exception that success has not been replicated abroad. (The exception which proves the rule is Hugh Leonard's Da, which won a Tony Award in 1973.) But from Brian Friel's emergence in 1964 with the ground-breaking Philadelphia, Here I Come!, which went on from its success at that year's Dublin Theatre Festival to a nine-month run on Broadway, each of the subsequent decades in his writing career has seen at least one of his works achieve critical and worldwide success, notably Aristocrats (1979), Translations (1980) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990). He has done so with plays which remain resolutely set (for the most part) in the remoteness of County Donegal, in the fictional locale of Ballybeg (from the Gaelic baile beag or “small town”).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Anthony Roche, University College Dublin
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel
  • Online publication: 28 January 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521853990.001
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Anthony Roche, University College Dublin
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel
  • Online publication: 28 January 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521853990.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by Anthony Roche, University College Dublin
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel
  • Online publication: 28 January 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521853990.001
Available formats
×