Brian Friel - An Appreciation

It is with great sadness that we note the laying to rest of Brian Friel yesterday. A quick look through our archival holdings shows the range and influence of Brian as a playwright and a friend to various theatre people for well over fifty years. From writers such as John McGahern and Thomas Kilroy, to a variety of theatre companies and actors, the energy and enthusiasm he brought to Irish theatre is clearly visible. In September 1963 the Lyric Theatre staged "The Enemy Within".

Featuring George Mooney in the role of Columba, it was one of a number of plays staged by the Lyric Theatre Company from young emerging Irish writers in the late fifties and early sixties.

Another play which features strongly in our collections is the "Loves of Cass Maguire". Siobhan McKenna's role as Cass in the Abbey's 1967 production introduced one of the most enduring characters to an Irish audience.



It was also one of the plays staged by the Druid Theatre Company in their opening production in the Summer of 1975, revived in 1996 for the 21st anniversary production, both productions starring Marie Mullen.

  

The Abbey Theatre Digital Archive, uniquely available at NUI Galway, captures the legacy and engagement of Brian Friel with Ireland's national theatre. The Abbey would première some of Friel's most powerful plays from the 1970s to present day, including The Freedom of the City (1973) Volunteers (1975) Living Quarters (1977) Dancing at Lughnasa (1990) Wonderful Tennessee (1993). The Abbey archive contains scripts, prompt scripts with detailed annotations, posters, programmes and recorded videos of performances of many of Friel's landmark works.



With around ninety references to Brian in our archives catalogue, why not take a virtual tour through our holdings to appreciate the impact of one of Ireland's great playwrights on Irish theatre. Visit: https://archivesearch.library.universityofgalway.ie/

Brian Friel: Looking back to the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, of 1964

To mark the 85th birthday of the great playwright Brian Friel, we have dipped into the archives and are looking at how, 50 years ago in 1964, Friel was busy at work staging works in Dublin and Belfast. 

These letters and documents are from the Lyric Theatre/O'Malley Archive. The documents relate to the October 1964 production of The Blind Mice written by Brian Friel. This was the first and only production of the play at the Lyric Theatre and the play has since remained unpublished. The Blind Mice had received its Irish premiere in 1963 at the Eblana Theatre and produced by Orion Productions, which were founded by the late Phyllis Ryan. 

This extensive collection of papers relate to the foundation by Mary O'Malley of the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast in the early 1950's and charts its growth from a theatre based in O'Malley's own house to becoming one of the most important cultural venues in Northern Ireland.

With specific reference to this 1964 production of The Blind Mice, the records of the Lyric Theatre archive contain the original and annotated scripts for the Belfast production, with scripts present marked "Stage Management",  "Lighting" and general copy with marked-up text of the play.

Also pictured here is a manuscript letter by Brian Friel written to Mary O'Malley written just weeks after the Belfast production of the Blind Mice and referring to the September 1964 and original production of Philadelphia Here I Come!  saying "The Dublin play went very well. It was one of those scripts that could have fallen flat on its face – and happily did not". Friel continues to outline his beliefs on writing a good satire and states where he falls somewhat short of his own expectations on this.

In the final paragraph of the letter, Friel wishes O'Malley continued good wishes for the Lyric Players Theatre: "Good luck with the new theatre – it could be great – and that is entirely up to you."

The Lyric theatre archive hold the following records for The Blind Mice:

T4/88 - Material relating to the production of The Blind Mice by Brian Friel at Derryvolgie Avenue. Includes two programmes and three copies of the script: a copy annotated with general production notes, a copy annotated with lighting directions, and a copy marked as being for the use of 'Stage Management'. This copy also has numerous notes and annotations. Also includes a portrait photograph of Sam Macready in costume as Father Chris Carroll.

The catalogue of the full Lyric Theatre/O'Malley archive is accessible here

Kilroy Making Theatre History

Thomas Kilroy's first play to reach the public was in fact a radio play, The Door, which won a BBC radio play competition and was broadcast in 1967 with Cyril Cusack in the main role. However, his first work for the stage, submitted to the Abbey in 1964, was The O'Neill (The Abbey, 1969). It cast into dramatic form a few episodes in the Ulster chief's fortunes, round about the Battle of the Yellow Ford (1598), and it was the first of Thomas Kilroy's "history plays" (seven of his original plays could be called that). He sought opinions about the draft play from the Abbey Theatre, from Hilton Edwards, Mary O'Malley, and Cyril Cusack, and got some interesting replies.

Cyril Cusack in Genet's
The Balcony,
1967

Cyril Cusack's letter is, in his own description, "ultra-cautious"; he does not think himself a good judge of a play, but despite all mincing of words he makes this comment on the play and on himself: "As it is, this is not the play I would ask, above all, to put on, and, alas, that is the only kind of play upon which I could possibly take a risk" (28 December 1964). An O'Neill could not beat him for mixing diplomacy with boldness.

Ernest Blythe, then director of the Abbey Theatre, reported that there were widely differing opinions on the Abbey board about the play. He himself committed himself as far as to say that "while O'Neill is not a play which might be expected to be wildly popular or a money-spinner and might indeed even provoke some public anger, we think it is far better than any previous play about O'Neill which has come to us and merits the most serious consideration" (24 May 1966).

However, despite such good feedback from The Abbey, The O'Neill suffered the fate of a quixotic journey via the desks of three successive directors and various others, before the Abbey finally produced it in May and June of 1969, with Dubliner Joseph O'Connor in the lead role. In the meantime, Kilroy's second play, The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, was turned down by the Abbey in 1966 or early 1967, and then overtook The O'Neill by reaching the stage first (Dublin Theatre Festival, 1968).

Revival of "The O'Neill" on the anniversary of O'Neill's departure from Rathmullen

It's also noteworthy that when Brian Friel wrote his own play about Hugh O'Neill, Making History (produced by Field Day in 1988), he and Kilroy were in correspondence about it. There is an essay by Anne Fogarty about the way either dramatist makes sense of "The Great O'Neill" and of historiography. (Irish University Review, vol 32 no.1, Spring/Summer 2002) 18-32.
Vera Orschel

'Threshold' Contributors: John McGahern

Threshold emerged at an exciting time for Irish literature. As previously discussed, the magazine had contact with writers such as Seamus Heaney and Brian Friel at early stages in their careers. However, they were positively famous at that time compared to the next subject of this series of blog posts, John McGahern.

McGahern first wrote to Mary O’Malley in January 1959, and the form of the letter is recognisable to anyone who has tried to have an editor publish their work. He had not yet appeared in print, and mentions that his first novel is being considered by publishers at the moment. This novel, The Barracks, was in fact not published until 1963, but was met with universal acclaim. The book won the AE Memorial Award from the Arts Council, and led to McGahern being awarded the Macauley Fellowship. The Fellowship allowed him to take a year off from his teaching position, during which he travelled widely and completed his second novel, The Dark. This novel became notorious after falling foul of the Censorship Act and being banned due to its themes of parental and clerical child abuse. A second letter (from June 1962) discusses the possible publication of an excerpt from The Barracks in Threshold.

McGahern's other works include The Leavetaking (based on his own experiences during and after his sabbatical year), The Pornographer, and most famously, Amongst Women. Like Friel and Heaney, McGahern was a member of Aosdána, until his death in March 2006.

It is particularly appropriate that these documents are stored here in NUI Galway Archives. John McGahern’s personal papers are one of our major literary collections, having been presented by the author in 2003. Further deposits were made by his widow Madeline McGahern in 2006 and 2007. This collection is available now (by appointment – please see staff page for contact details), and we are delighted to be able to make the full descriptive list available online.

Sarah Poutch

'Threshold' Contributors: Brian Friel

Another writer with whom Mary O’Malley corresponded on contributing to Threshold is the renowned playwright Brian Friel. The Lyric Players Theatre in fact also staged his play The Enemy Within in 1963, which along with the earlier example of Seamus Heaney is another example of Mary O’Malley’s recognition of the achievements of young Irish writers. Friel went on to guest edit Threshold.

Friel shares another similarity with Heaney in that they started their careers as teachers, both training at St Joseph’s Teacher Training College in Belfast. Friel though went on to teach for over ten years at schools in county Derry before eventually leaving in 1960 to write full-time. Heaney and Friel, as two of the most celebrated writers in modern Irish literature also share the distinction of being elected a Saoi of Aosdána, an Irish association of artists.

Friel’s play The Enemy Within premiered at the Abbey in Dublin in 1962, but ran for just nine performances. However, Mary O’Malley corresponded with Friel and negotiated a revival of the play by the Lyric in September 1963, which proved a great success and was broadcast on both the BBC Northern Ireland Home Service, and on Radio Éireann. Some of the items of interest in the Lyric Theatre archives in relation to this production are a heavily annotated script, a signed programme, and black and white photographs of the cast, as well as the aforementioned correspondence.

In later years the Lyric produced more of Friel’s plays, including The Gentle Island (1972), The Loves of Cass Maguire (1976), and Philadelphia, Here I Come! (starring a young Liam Neeson) amongst others. This has continued to the present day, with the most recent Lyric Theatre production of a Friel work being The Home Place during the 2008–09 season.

Sarah Poutch