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My bloody Valentine: why there's nothing romantic about love on the stage
From Shakespeare to Coward, Strindberg to Friel, turbulence and conflict make far better theatre than chocolates and rosesAs we approach Valentine's Day, one's thoughts turn to portraits of love in the...
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Theatre review: Dancing at Lughnasa / Old Vic, London
Old Vic, LondonFor the second time in a week we are confronted by a play set in the summer of 1936 dealing with domestic and social upheaval. Like Peter Flannery's Burnt By The Sun, Brian Friel's...
View ArticleQuiz: The life of Brian Friel
As the Old Vic revives Dancing at Lughnasa, can you prove your knowledge of the Irish playwright – or will you end up lost in Translations?
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Rafael Behr: The Golden Age of liberty is now
Never mind the doom-mongers – the people of this country have never enjoyed such freedomMichael Evans was born out of wedlock. His uncle, Jack Mundy, is a missionary whose Catholic faith is lost in...
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The Yalta Game | Theatre review
King's theatre, EdinburghThe Yalta game is played by idle holidaymakers passing the time in the central square of the Crimean city. The idea is to gaze at the other tourists, as they talk, drink and...
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Afterplay | Theatre review
King's Theatre, Edinburgh"It looks as if we have this place to ourselves again," says Andrey when he meets Sonya in the deserted dining room of a Moscow hotel. The line sounds like a theatrical in-joke...
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Donal Donnelly obituary
A talented Irish actor on stage and in films for Ford and HustonFor an actor who worked with two of the greatest movie directors of the last century and appeared in the world premieres of plays by...
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Translations/Molly Sweeney - review
Curve, LeicesterIt is sometimes hard to believe that there's only one Brian Friel. On the one hand there is the expansive bard of Ballybeg, the Emerald Chekhov. On the other is the austere master of...
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The Yalta Game/ Elegy for a Lady – review
Stephen Joseph theatre, ScarboroughThe Stephen Joseph is one of the best of those undervalued national treasures – our regional theatres, all fighting hard to keep our communities provided with food...
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Philadelphia, Here I Come! – review
Donmar Warehouse, LondonExile and emigration are constant themes of Irish drama. But Brian Friel's 1964 play, beautifully directed by Lyndsey Turner, lends fresh life to a stock situation in two ways:...
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time; Philadelphia, Here I...
Cottesloe; Donmar; Criterion, LondonIt's almost perverse. To take a story whose hero cannot lie, for whom metaphor is a foreign land, and put it on that most metaphorical of places, the stage. To take...
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Brian Friel: trapped in silence
With a new production of Friel's first play at the Donmar, Colm Tóibín re-examines the works of a writer whose characters' words often conceal as much as they revealIn all his work, Brian Friel has...
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Hedda Gabler; King Lear; The Judas Kiss – review
Old Vic; Almeida; Hampstead, LondonHedda Gablerends with a famous bang behind closed doors. Wouldn't it, a friend once suggested, be ripping if those doors opened on a Hedda who had put an end to...
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Molly Sweeney – review
The Print Room, LondonI was wrong about Brian Friel's play. Seeing it for the first time at the Almeida in 1994, I took it to be an arid replay of Friel's Faith Healer: again two men and a woman engage...
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Derry gets its cultural kicks and a new start from local heroes
All communities are reaping the benefit in the 2013 UK city of culture, as visitors pour in and a new generation of talent flourishes, with a little help from old hitmakersAt the porch of St...
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Dancing at Lughnasa – review
Royal and Derngate, NorthamptonAn unremarkable, middle-aged man addresses the audience from a farmhouse kitchen nestling in a grassy glade: "When I cast my mind back to the summer of 1936 …" His tone...
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Theatre review: Dancing at Lughnasa / Old Vic, London
Old Vic, LondonFor the second time in a week we are confronted by a play set in the summer of 1936 dealing with domestic and social upheaval. Like Peter Flannery's Burnt By The Sun, Brian Friel's...
View ArticleQuiz: The life of Brian Friel
As the Old Vic revives Dancing at Lughnasa, can you prove your knowledge of the Irish playwright – or will you end up lost in Translations?
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rafael Behr: The Golden Age of liberty is now
Never mind the doom-mongers – the people of this country have never enjoyed such freedomMichael Evans was born out of wedlock. His uncle, Jack Mundy, is a missionary whose Catholic faith is lost in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Yalta Game | Theatre review
King's theatre, EdinburghThe Yalta game is played by idle holidaymakers passing the time in the central square of the Crimean city. The idea is to gaze at the other tourists, as they talk, drink and...
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