'The writing is beautiful, supple, rhythmical, charged with the slow, sure throb of despair and enchantment... Brian Friel is the most profound and poetic of contemporary Irish dramatists.' Observer Throughout the remote and forgotten corners of the British Isles, Frank Hardy offers the promise of redemption to the sick and the suffering. But his is an unreliable gift, a dangerous calling which brings him into conflict with his wife Grace and his manager Teddy. Their competing accounts of past events reveal the fragility of memory and the necessity of stories as a means of survival. Brian Friel's Faith Healer was first produced at the Longacre Theatre, New York, in April 1979 and was revived at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in June 2016. 'The night of Faith Healer is one that still blazes in recollection for me, as religious experiences of art do. And it became a sort of touchstone for me in understanding not only Mr. Friel's work with a depth I hadn't appreciated before but also for defining the elusiveness of great art and the pain of the artist who creates it.' Ben Brantley, New York Times

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Fed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and his humiliating job in his father's grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O'Donnell has accepted his aunt's invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg.

With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.

Set in Londonderry in 1970, this gripping drama by the acclaimed author of Faith Healer and Translations explores the ongoing Irish "troubles" that plague the country to this day.

Deemed a "modern classic" by the Daily Telegraph, the play Translations takes place in late August 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal. In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes of cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and rendered into English. In examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative.

This marks the first of five volumes collecting together the complete work of Brian Friel. The Enemy Within (1962) Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964) The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966) Lovers (Winners and Losers) (1967) Crystal and Fox (1968) The Gentle Island (1971)

Drama / 9 m., 6 f. / Var. sets. In rural Russia in the mid nineteenth century, a brilliant, anarchic young medical student arrives at the provincial family villa of his best friend, Arkady, for the summer vacation. He wants to despise the family for their imperturbable complacency and bourgeois effeteness, but he is tormented by conflicting emotions. His desperate action has tragic consequences. "The evening leaves you pondering not just the play's political implications but the ageless tragedy of parent child relationship." London Guardian . "Drama at its most stimulating and eloquent... has the density, complexity and richness of a great 19th century novel without the usual creaking stage mechanism of dramatized fiction." N.Y. Daily News. "A fine, solid piece of drama not just about the divisions between the different generations but also about nihilism, revolution and the immutability of love." Time Out. FEE: $75 per performance.

This second collection of Brian Friel's work contains: The Freedom of the City (1973) Volunteers (1975) Living Quarters (1977) Aristocrats (1979) (March) Faith Healer (1979) (April) Translations (1980)

This enthralling play considers the relationship between the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janacek, the passion he felt for a married woman nearly forty years his junior, and his final surge of creative energy. Performances premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2003.

This fourth collection of Brian Friel's work contains: The London Vertigo (after Macklin) (1992) (January) A Month in the Country (after Turgenev) (1992) (August) Wonderful Tennessee (1993) Molly Sweeney (1994) Give Me Your Answer, Do! (1997)

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after twenty-five years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christian and pagan, of which they are nonetheless a part.

This third collection of Brian Friel's work contains: Three Sisters (Chekhov) (1981) The Communication Cord (1982) Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) (1987) Making History (1988) Dancing at Lughnasa (1990)

Hedda Gabler returns, dissatisfied, from a long honeymoon. Bored by her aspiring academic husband, she foresees a life of tedious convention. And so, aided and abetted by her predatory confidante, Judge Brack, she begins to manipulate the fates of those around her to devastating effect. Brian Friel's version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in September 2008, to celebrate the theatre's birthday, eighty years after the Gate's inaugural production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt.

The year is 1878. The widowed Christopher Gore, his son David and their housekeeper Margaret, the woman with whom they are both in love, live at The Lodge in Ballybeg. But in this era of unrest at the dawn of Home Rule, their seemingly serene life is threatened by the arrival of Christopher's English cousin, who unwittingly ignites deep animosity among the villagers of Ballybeg. The Home Place premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in February 2005.

This fifth collection of Brian Friel's work contains: Uncle Vanya (after Chekhov) (1998) The Yalta Game (after Chekhov) (2001) The Bear (after Chekhov) (2002) Afterplay (after 2002) Performances (2003) The Home Place (2005) Hedda Gabler (after Ibsen) (2005)

Introduced by Christopher Murray, this second collection of Brian Friel's plays includes some of his most acclaimed work for the stage. This edition includes Fathers and Sons, Making History, Wonderful Tennessee, Molly Sweeney and Dancing at Lughnasa, which was made into a major motion picture by Sony Pictures.

Contents: Philadelphia, Here I Come; The Freedom of the City; Living Quarters; Aristocrats; Faith Healer; Translations Brian Friel was born in County Tyrone in 1929 and worked as a teacher before turning to full-time writing in 1960. His first stage success was in 1964 with Philadelphia, Here I Come, which established his claim as heir to such distinguished predecessors as Yeats, Synge, O'Casey, and Behan. In 1979 he and actor Stephen Rea formed the Field Day Theatre Company, whose first theatrical production was Friel's Translations in 1980. Also included in this selection are The Freedom of the City, set in Londonderry in 1970; Living Quarters, which Desmond MacAvok in the Evening Presscalled "one of the most fascinating and, in the end, truly moving evenings. . .in Irish Theatre"; Faith Healer, a metaphoric depiction of the artist and his gift' and Aristocrats, "as fine and as stimulating and as warm a piece of writing as had appeared on the Irish stage for many years," according to David Nowland, the Irish Times. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The central character of this play is Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who led an Irish and Spanish alliance against the armies of Elizabeth I in an attempt to drive the English out of Ireland. The action takes place before and after the Battle of Kinsale, at which the alliance was defeated: with O'Neill at home in Dungannon, as a fugitive in the mountains, and finally exiled in Rome. In his handling of this momentous episode Brian Friel has avoided the conventions of 'historical drama' to produce a play about history, the continuing process.

Three exquisite masterpieces from Brian Friel, based on works by Chekhov: The Bear: A Vaudeville; Afterplay (where Sonya from Uncle Vanya and Andrey from Three Sisters meet), and The Yalta Game (from a theme in Chekhov's 1899 story, 'The Lady with the Lapdog'). The Yalta Game: from a theme in Chekhov's 1899 story 'The Lady with the Lapdog' Two strangers meet on holiday and almost manage to convince one another that disappointments are 'merely the postponement of the complete happiness to come...' The Bear: A Vaudeville Elena Popova, a young and attractive widow, has immersed herself in the role of mourning for her philandering but now dead husband. Luka, her frail and ancient man-servant, tries in vain to snap her out of it. Then Smirnov barges in...Afterplay 1920s Moscow, a small run-down cafe. Uncle Vanya's niece, Sonya Serebriakova, now in her forties, is the only customer. Until the arrival of the Three Sisters' put-upon brother Andrey Prozorov. Two Plays After (Afterplay and The Bear) premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in March 2002 and Afterplay transferred to the Gielgud Theatre, London, in September 2002.