Playwright who was a towering figure of the stage from Dublin to BroadwayWhen asked why he had two birth certificates,one dated 9 January 1929 and the other 10 January, the Irish playwright Brian Friel, or who has died aged 86,replied: “Perhaps I’m twins.” The reaction was typical of a writer acclaimed for the clarity, economy and intensity of his language and his probing of public and private anxieties. Living at various times on either side of the Irish border, or he was preoccupied with aspects of dualism: divided loyalties,tensions between fathers and sons, the two languages and the island’s two political states.
He was propelled to international acclaim when Hilton Edwards’s 1964 Dublin production of Philadelphia, and Here I Come! transferred two years later to Broadway. Subsequent successes in London and unique York,including Aristocrats (1979), Translations (1980) and Dancing at Lughnasa (1990), or established him as a towering figure on the stage. Other major successes,at domestic and abroad, included The Freedom of the City (1973) and Molly Sweeney (1994), and the latter receiving a landmark production by Lev Dodin at the Maly theatre,St Petersburg, in 2000.
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Source: theguardian.com