The Theatre of Brian Friel: Tradition and Modernity

(Hardback)

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Brian Friel is Ireland's foremost living playwright, whose work spans fifty years and has won numerous awards, including three Tonys and a Lifetime Achievement Arts Award. Author of twenty-five plays, and whose work is studied at GCSE and A level (UK), and the Leaving Certificate (Ire), besides at undergraduate level, he is regarded as a classic in contemporary drama studies. Christopher Murray's Critical Companion is the definitive guide to Friel's work, offering both a detailed study of individual plays and an exploration of Friel's dual commitment to tradition and modernity across his oeuvre. Beginning with Friel's 1964 work Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Christopher Murray follows a broadly chronological route through the principal plays, including Aristocrats, Faith Healer, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, Molly Sweeney and The Home Place. Along the way it considers themes of exile, politics, fathers and sons, belief and ritual, history, memory, gender inequality, and loss, all set against the dialectic of tradition and modernity. It is supplemented by essays from Shaun Richards, David Krause and Csilla Bertha providing varying critical perspectives on the playwright's work.

Reviews

What sets this monograph apart from others devoted to this key playwright are its many illuminating, nuanced, surprising framings of Friels plays by other plays from the Irish, English, and European stage. Murrays most provocative insights arise from his imaginative juxtapositions, for example, of Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Millers Death of a Salesman Murrays fluency with theater history beyond the twentieth-century Irish stage gives his survey its fl[a]vor and edge I would include [The Theatre of Brian Friel] among the indispensable recent full-length appraisals of this seminal figure of the Irish stag. -- Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College * English Literature in Transition *
Murrays strength is in his citation of those individual performances of the plays which he has witnessed over the years, and it is rarer to find the opening night of a Friel play which he did not attend than one he did. -- Feargal Whelan * New Theatre Quarterly *
Creative, fertile and fresh. Murrays kind of criticism is best described as classical, representing an exemplary standard within a basically traditional and long-established form or style. As a generalist analysis of Friels plays and their impact on contemporary theatre, this is the best, most extensive and most up-to-date study so far. -- Ulf Dantanus, UK * Nordic Irish Studies *
There are new insights here for those who know Friels plays well but a sound introduction for others who may be coming to him for the first time. By its combination of a chronological and thematic approach, it contrives to avoid a pedestrian plod through the life and works, its master argument capacious enough to include the many different ways Friel has adapted tradition to the conditions of modernity. The Friel that emerges from Murrays book is a playwright of ideas, a literary playwright for whom language is all important, whose career has been dedicated to the development of an aesthetic of modern tragedy. -- Nicholas Grene, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland * Breac *
As Murray ably demonstrates, there is a great deal left to be said about this most elusive - and allusive - of playwrights ... [His] book-length critique is supplemented and enriched by a final section, 'Critical Perspectives', in which other leading scholars of Irish theatre ... offer alternative readings of Friel's drama. * Notes and Queries *

Author Bio

Christopher Murray is Emeritus Professor of English and Drama at University College, Dublin, Ireland, where he was the founder member and first director of the UCD Drama Centre offering MA and PhD in Modern Drama Studies. His many publications include Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation. He is chair of the board of directors of the Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin.