The funeral of playwright Brian Friel has taken place in Glenties, Co Donegal.
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“The consummate Irish storyteller, his work spoke to each of us with humour, emotion and authenticity”.
Brian Friel wrote plays for over four decades. Friel lived in County Donegal, Ireland.
“Faith Healer”, seen in 1979 as well in 2006 in a revival starring Ralph Fiennes, followed a man who questions his gifts. “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”.
Northern Ireland was greatly enriched by Friel’s canon, and is diminished by his death.
Image caption Meryl Streep and Brian Friel at a screening of the film version of his play Dancing at Lughnasa.
He was educated at St Columb’s College in Derry – also the alma mater of poet Seamus Heaney and Hume.
“Brian Friel was the most gifted dramatist of his generation and amongst the greatest ever to come out of Ireland”.
Friel also served as a senator in the Irish parliament and his portrait was displayed in Ireland’s National Gallery.
Deane said that the theatre company and his writing enabled Friel to observe and analyse “the deforming effects of authority both on the authority itself and those upon whom it was exercised”.
“Loyalty, treason, patriotism, republicanism and homeland” were amongst these, he said: explaining: “Words which we think we share and which are, in fact, barriers to communication”.
Friel was often hailed as the Irish Chekhov – which does credit to the subtlety of his characterisations but perhaps implies a softness along with a relish for tragicomedy belied by a few of his flintier, more formally daring and political works (there’s a savagery in a few of the plays, not least those written during the height of the Troubles, like Volunteers).
A production of Dancing At Lughnasa is due to begin at the Dublin Theatre Festival this week and comes just weeks after the inaugural Lughnasa worldwide Friel Festival, a new annual cross-border event.
And in 1987 he was appointed to the Seanad by Taoiseach Charles Haughey. “He was an inspiration to all Irish writers”.
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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.
