Brian Friel
Aaron Monaghan on The Shaughraun: ‘I’d vastly underestimated Boucicault. He’s kind of a genius’
Galway International Arts Festival 2026: Druid Theatre’s revival leans into the Victorian melodrama’s surprising political undercurrent
A Better Locksmith by Jane Coyle: Chronicle of an astonishingly fecund time in the theatre of Northern Ireland
The critic’s love and care shine through in this compendium of her theatre writing from 1984 to the present
Hamnet’s Maggie O’Farrell: ‘I turned down an OBE because I didn’t want British Empire as part of my name’
After the ‘bonkers’ Oscars, the Co Derry-born author of Hamnet is poised to publish Land, a novel inspired by her own family history in post-Famine Ireland
Colin Murphy: Online platforms are engines of outrage, but theatre is one of empathy
All of the playwright’s work is grounded in public life - mainly dramatisations of political events featuring real-life characters
Aidan Turner: ‘I’d be sitting in the trailer going, ‘God Almighty. Can you just give me a cop drama?’’
The Dublin actor says the main trick to being a professional is doing the work and learning the lines. ‘And then just staying as healthy and as fit as you can. There’s no excuse’
This Uncle Vanya – a quick-witted Risteárd Cooper – plays it cool in a house of freaks
Review: Cathal Cleary directs Brian Friel’s Chekhov adaptation at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin
Event guide: Ed Sheeran, Uncle Vanya and the other best things to see in Ireland in the week ahead
December 6th-12th, 2025: The best music, theatre, art and more coming your way this week
The Mirror Stage: ‘When you imagine a theatre show about psychosis, what do you see?’
Brokentalkers have teamed up with the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland to blend testimony, research and performance
Event guide: The Weir, Kilkenny Arts Festival and other best things to do in Ireland this week
August 2nd-8th, 2025: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Tracing the real people in Brian Friel’s ‘first great Irish play’
'Stock characters' in Philadelphia, Here I Come! were not only familiar Irish small-town figures, but inspired by real people
Making History Friel review: Everyman production throws a lot at Brian Friel’s clunky play
The drama’s radical idea is to locate disorganised rebel leaders in a drawingroom comedy, but it’s soon derailed by a insistent focus on the nature of remembering
‘People forget that Brian Friel was a radical’
Des Kennedy, head of the Everyman, is directing Making History, about Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, as the first production in the Cork theatre’s Everyman Made series
Fionnula Flanagan: I remember the ‘No Irish or dogs’ signs. I didn’t want to live in a country that took that attitude towards me
Put off London, the actor went instead to the US, where she spent 50 years as one of Ireland’s most prominent screen presences
Brian Friel’s plays to be brought home to cross-Border communities that inspired them
Five-year project will stage each play in a setting relevant to its theme and in the season it was set
Letters by Oliver Sacks review: Great light cast on neurologist, author and humanist
Kate Edgar’s compilation paints a detailed portrait of a sometimes shy, uncertain, excitable human who was also a deeply compassionate and open-hearted outsider
Amitav Ghosh: ‘Ireland is where the British created all their colonial methods, it’s where they tried it out first’
Acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s new work explores how the climate crisis has its roots in European colonialism
Poets’ prose: Thinking about questions posed by poems, from Seamus Heaney to Eavan Boland
The Frontier of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose edited by Ian Hickey and Eugene O’Brien; Citizen Poet: New & Selected Essays by Eavan Boland; Questioning Ireland by Thomas McCarthy
Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music
Kathleen Watkins was one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met
Molly Sweeney: Brian Friel revival features fine performances and elegant staging
Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: Andrew Flynn’s production, with Genevieve Hulme-Beaman, Denis Conway and Manus Halligan, makes up for play’s slight staticness
Brian Friel: Beginnings by Kelly Matthews – The making of a highly competitive playwright
Broadway, here he comes. But first there were Ulster feiseanna, sports and his family’s literary drive
Dancing at Lughnasa review: Gate’s triumphant, breathtakingly beautiful revival deserves groaning houses
Theatre: Caroline Byrne’s production, featuring Zara Devlin, Peter Gowen and Ruth McGill, makes both dream and reverie of Brian Friel’s indestructible play
The Guide: the Kneecap film, Nicki Minaj and other events to see, shows to book and ones to catch before they end
July 6th-12th: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Anne Friel on her late husband playwright Brian: ‘I was crazy about him. He was everything’
Rehearsals are underway for a new production of Dancing at Lughnasa at the Gate this summer, and a new book about the playwright was published this week
Thomas Kilroy’s death feels like the end of an era for Irish theatre
The writer was often mentioned as part of a ‘god tier’ of Irish playwrights, alongside Tom Murphy and, especially, his close friend Brian Friel
Ridley Scott’s crude dismissal of historians is galling
Director insisted history does not matter, but the best film-makers strike a delicate balance between narrative and historical fact
Making Empire: Incisive study of Ireland’s complex role in the British empire
TCD historian skilfully traces a history of conquest, assimilation and defiance that came to shape not just Ireland but Britain and its global empire
Leo Varadkar needs better cultural reference points than Benefits Street
It was a jaw-dropping moment that makes you wonder about the cultural diet of our political leaders. Never mind: here are some recommendations to get them back on track
‘When we left Donegal, I spent my whole school year yearning to go back’
Hannah Peel’s Mercury-nominated Fir Wave, her Dancing at Lughnasa soundtrack, her Game of Thrones score – all are illuminated by a longing that folds into how she feels about Ireland
An Irishwoman in Sweden: It took time for me to feel ready to claim a corner of Stockholm just for me
Caring for babies and moving to a different country took priority over a woman’s love of theatre, but she found great opportunity in Stockholm
Abbey Theatre condemns ‘random act of mindless violence’ against actor who was bitten and glassed
Oleksandr Hrekov (23), cast member of Abbey Theatre’s Translations, needed hospitalisation following attack on Saturday night
Brian Friel’s Translations: The Abbey’s Ukrainian production has an urgent, dangerous energy
Theatre: In this Lesya Ukrainka staging, the narrative drive of the forthcoming Famine is replaced by tomorrow’s headlines of destruction and war crimes
Brian Friel’s Translations, in Ukrainian: ‘This is about everything that is happening in Ukraine’
Kyiv’s Lesya Ukrainka theatre company is visiting Dublin to stage its evocative production of the classic Irish play at the Abbey
Fra Fee: ‘I was completely terrified of coming out in Northern Ireland’
Cabaret star’s acting career has taken him from Tyrone to West End and LA
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Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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