Death of Brian Friel

Posted by Jim on October 3, 2015

Brian Friel, who has died aged 86, was the best-known Irish playwright
of his generation. Translations, about the low-level repression of Irish
culture in the 19th century, remains his most celebrated, while Dancing
at Lughnasa was his most successful, winning three Tony Awards in 1992.

Friel was also an accomplished short-story writer and in 1980 was a
founder of Field Day Theatre Company.

Born in County Tyrone, in January 1929, ten years later he moved with
his family to Derry. Trained as a teacher at St Joseph’s College,
Belfast, he began teaching in 1950.

In all Friel wrote 24 published plays, many dealing with the erratic
workings of memory, and with the family, using Ballybeg, the archetypal
small town, as a backdrop.

Three of his most critically acclaimed plays were premiered over a
period of 18 months, beginning in 1979.

Aristocrats chronicles the disintegration of a once wealthy Irish
family. Faith Healer, from 1979, emphasises the uncertainty of personal
history.

Translations, which followed in 1980, is about the mapping of Ireland by
the British Ordnance Survey in the 1830s. Focusing on the translation of
Irish place names into English, thereby providing a dramatic metaphor
for imperialism, it fuelled debates about the identity confusion and
historical revisionism that remains a feature of Irish culture. Praising
its depiction of colonialism, the critic James Fenton welcomed it as a
“vigorous example of corrective propaganda”.

Friel insisted he had not written a play only about the Irish people
being suppressed by English soldiers. “The play has to do with language
and only language. And if it becomes overwhelmed by that political
element, it is lost.”

A former member of the now-defunct Nationalist Party in Northern
Ireland, Friel maintained a nationalist outlook throughout his life. “I
do think that the problem will always be exacerbated as long as England
is in the country,” he said in 1991. “But if England were to go tomorrow
morning, that wouldn’t solve it. We still have got to find a modus
vivendi for ourselves within the country.”

Aosdána, an Irish association of artists, said Friel probed the great
national, political and cultural dilemmas of our time with “intense
passion” and tenderness.

“His colleagues in Aosdána recognised his stature as a giant of Irish
literature by electing him to be a Saoi in 2006, an honour limited to
only seven artists in the country,” it said.

“His legacy to the Irish people is immense,” said the President, adding
that Friel would be remembered as a great Irishman.

“His is a body of work that will endure. He was familiar to generations
of Irish people and others across the globe,” said President Higgins.

“After Brian Friel’s work, no one could offer amnesia as an alternative
to history. In great works like Translations with Field Day [theatre
company] and The Great O’Neill [in Making History] he addressed the
major contradictions in Irish identity and history.”

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams said much of Friel’s work “dealt with societal
change in Ireland, culture, language and Irish identity.

“A humble man, he was also a national treasure and a truly unique
individual. Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.”