Born near Omagh, Co Tyrone, Friel was the son of Patrick, a schoolmaster and nationalist county councillor, and Mary Christina (nee McLoone), a postmistress.
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“Their themes described the complexities of the Irish character with enormous wit, grace and love”.
“The consummate Irish storyteller, his work spoke to each of us with humour, emotion and authenticity”, he said.
One of Ireland’s most renown playwrights Brian Friel has passed away at the age of 86 after a short illness.
His talent produced works such as Dancing at Lughnasa and Philadelphia, Here I Come, earning him fame and recognition around the world.
BRIAN FRIEL, ONE of Ireland’s best known playwrights, has died.
Yet this famously reclusive writer had already committed to a sort of vanishing act so far as the outside world was concerned: for a long time, Friel had let his work speak for itself and what an extraordinarily rich, diverse and elusive utterance that body of plays – around 30 in total – delivered.
“Brian Friel was the most gifted dramatist of his generation and amongst the greatest ever to come out of Ireland”.
He was educated in St Columb’s College – also the alma mater of Nobel prize winners Seamus Heaney and John Hume.
Dancing at Lughnasa won a Tony award in the U.S. in 1992 and was later turned into a film starring Meryl Streep.
Northern Ireland was greatly enriched by Friel’s canon, and is diminished by his death.
Irish playwright Brian Friel has died aged 86.
“Whenever you hold an old photo in your hand, the images come to life in your mind, and the memories (good, bad or however you remember them in that moment) take shape and in that moment, they live again”, she said.
In 1967, he moved his family from Derry to Muff in Co Donegal, eventually settling in Greencastle on the Inishowen peninsula, later expressing a few regret that he had not stayed around for the Civil Rights Movement in Derry. Like Yeats, he was offered the chance to have an official say in public affairs when Charles Haughey appointed him an independent member of Senate for two years from 1987.
“He is rightly regarded as one of the greatest Irish playwrights of all time”. Were it not for the steadfast devotion of the Irish Repertory Theatre, which produces his plays off Broadway at regular intervals, he would be even less familiar to New York audiences. Both Translations and Dancing at Lughnasa were much admired at the National Theatre, while Faith Healer was memorably revived in London, Dublin, and New York in the first decade of the new century.
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He was a great favourite too at the Gaeity Theatre, where his handprints have a place of honour outside the entrance.
