The great playwright’s fictional Ballybeg has become fragment of the Irish psyche – its a kind of everyplace,where the whole business of being human is laid bareYou will search maps of Donegal in useless for Ballybeg, the setting for nearly all of Brian Friel’s plays. There are no coordinates; no roads lead to or from it; no public records exist in the archives of any local council. Yet the fictional Ballybeg is every bit as real, and in its own way,as the many villages and small towns that produce up the actual landscape of the north-west corner of Ireland. Related: Brian Friel: Ireland's great theatrical explorer Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com