The Theatre of Brian Friel

Acknowledgements1. Situating Friel 2. Coming of Age: Philadelphia, Here I Come! 3. Formation of an Aesthetic: The Loves of Cass McGuire and Crystal and Fox 4. Speaking Out: The Freedom of the City and Volunteers 5. Uncertainty, Memory, Tragedy: Living Quarters and Faith Healer 6. A Kind of Trilogy: Making History, Translations and The Home Place 7. The Chekhov Factor and Gender Issues: Aristocrats, Dancing at Lughnasa and Molly Sweeney 8. 'The Vodka-and-Tonic Society': Wonderful Tennessee and Give Me Your Answer, Do! 9. Critical Perspectives: Shaun Richards, 'Placed Identities for Placeless Times: Brian Friel and Post-Colonial Criticism'; David Krause, 'The Failed Words of Brian Friel'; Csilla Bertha, 'Art as a lieu de memoire in Brian Friel's The Home Place'10. Performances11. General ConclusionNotes Selected bibliography Index

Christopher Murray is Emeritus Professor of English and Drama at University College, Dublin, where he was the founder member and first director of the UCD Drama Centre offering MA and PhD in Modern Drama Studies. His many publications include Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation (2000). He is chair of the board of directors of the Gaiety School of Acting, Dublin. Csilla Bertha teaches at the University of Debrecen, Hungary. She is a member of the advisory board of Irish University Review, the editorial board of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, and a founding member of CISLE. David Krause was Professor of English at Brown University, USA, until his death in 2011. He was the author of the critical biography Sean O'Casey: The Man and His Work (New York: Macmillan), and a four-volume edition of the Letters of Sean O'Casey (1975-1992). He was also author of the critical study The Profane Book of Irish Comedy (1982). Shaun Richards is Emeritus Professor of Irish Studies at Staffordshire University, UK. Professional Research Fellow at St Mary's University College, London, UK. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama (2004) and co-author with Chris Morash of Mapping Ireland: Theories of Space and Place (2013).

What sets this monograph apart from others devoted to this key playwright are its many illuminating, nuanced, surprising 'framings' of Friel's plays by other plays from the Irish, English, and European stage. Murray's most provocative insights arise from his imaginative juxtapositions, for example, of Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Miller's Death of a Salesman . Murray's fluency with theater history beyond the twentieth-century Irish stage gives his survey its fl[a]vor and edge . I would include [The Theatre of Brian Friel] . among the indispensable recent full-length appraisals of this seminal figure of the Irish stag. Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College English Literature in Transition