Mr. Friel was a constant presence on world stages after that, prolific in his production of plays and rarely experiencing fallow periods.
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He was born in Killyclogher, County Tyrone in 1929.
“Their themes described the complexities of the Irish character with enormous wit, grace and love”.
Brian Friel wrote plays for over four decades.
Mourning for Friel was echoed in Hollywood, with Meryl Streep, who starred as Kate Mundy in the 1998 screen version of “Dancing at Lughnasa” describing Friel’s work as having “universal appeal”.
BRIAN FRIEL, ONE of Ireland’s best known playwrights, has died. Indeed his 1997 play Give Me Your Answer, Do! told of a writer pushing on in years who lives in the rural isolation of Donegal.
He added, “He was a man of powerful intellect, great courage and generosity. Friel will be deeply missed by all of the professional colleagues who had the great fortune to work and collaborate with one of Ireland’s true world talents”.
He attended St Columb’s College in Derry, before going on to receive a BA from St. Pat’s College in Maynooth in 1948.
Plays such as Aristocrats (1979), Translations (1980), and the Tony award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa (1990; film adaptation, 1998)-deal with family ties, communication and mythmaking as human needs, and the tangled relationships between narrative, history, and nationality.
Northern Ireland was greatly enriched by Friel’s canon, and is diminished by his death.
Brian Friel pictured with actor Stephen Rea in The Patrician Hall, Carrickmore.
Belfast playwright Martin Lynch said: “To have someone who cracked Broadway and cracked the West End, not with populist stuff but with real plays, is huge”.
He also proudly served as a senator in the Upper House of the Irish parliament between 1987 and 1989.
At a superficial level, it may be the case that, yes, his legacy has been to create transient, barely perceptible flickers of enlightenment – yet if we are to do him justice we should be wary of taking him at his word.
“‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ paved the way for other Irish plays to tour to New York, giving Irish theatre a currency long since enjoyed by many of our writers”, said Fiach Mac Conghail, director of Ireland’s national theatre, the Abbey. She recalled how Friel during filming in northwest Ireland “introduced the people of Donegal to us as if we were all members of his family and community”.
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Of the many tributes and honours he received for his work, one included his handprints being immortalised in bronze outside the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin alongside the likes of Luciano Pavarotti and fellow playwright John B Keane.
