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Brian Friel

October 2025

  • Three African men on a sparsely furnished stage, with two in a military-style uniform of tan jackets and red trousers

    Donegal to Dakar: the Irish play about British rule hitting home in post-colonial Senegal

    An African staging of Brian Friel’s Translations resonates deeply as the country distances itself from France

September 2025

  • DANCING AT LUGHNASA by Friel, , Director - Elizabeth Newman, Designer - Francis O’Connor, Movement Director - Sundeep Saini, Lighting Designer - Chris Davey, Composer and Sound Designer - Pippa Murphy, Casting Director - Arthur Carrington, Associate Director - Amanda Collins, Birkbeck Assistant Director - Sadie Mears, Fight Director - Kaitlin Howard, Associate Lighting Designer - Mark Distin Webster, Sheffield Theatres, 2025, Credit: Johan Persson

    Dancing at Lughnasa review – flashes of rapture in Brian Friel’s story of sisterhood

    Elizabeth Newman’s debut show as artistic director captures the play’s humour and heartbreak yet leaves you wishing for more of its ecstatic abandon

January 2025

  • A man winningly gestures to the audience with both hands in a welcoming gesture

    Faith Healer review – Brian Friel revival tests its audience’s belief

  • A man sitting in a red theatre seat wearing a beige jumper

    Brian Friel’s plays to be brought home to cross-border Irish terroir that inspired them

March 2024

  • Justine Mitchell as Grace in Faith Healer

    The week in theatre: Faith Healer; Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon – review

  • Raffish charisma and hollow cruelty … Declan Conlon as Frank in Faith Healer at the Lyric Hammersmith.

    Faith Healer review – Brian Friel’s classic questions everything we believe

April 2023

  • Dancing at Lughnasa.

    The week in theatre: Dancing at Lughnasa; Private Lives – review

  • Siobhán McSweeney, Ardal O’Hanlon and Justine Mitchell in Dancing at Lughnasa.

    Dancing at Lughnasa review – an exquisite staging of Brian Friel’s evocative drama

January 2023

  • Vittorio Angelone in Translations

    Vittorio Angelone: Translations review – an eye-catching standup debut

    The Irish-Italian comedian, nominated for best newcomer at the Edinburgh fringe, delivers his show with a light touch and ample self-irony

May 2022

  • Brian Doherty as Hugh in 'Translations' credit Johnny Frazer

    Translations review – Brian Friel’s tale of two cultures has universal impact

    Caitríona McLaughlin’s taut new production of Friel’s colonisation drama is a timeless study of change and identity

December 2021

  • Aidan Gillen as Frank Hardy in Faith Healer

    Faith Healer review – Aidan Gillen is mercurial and mysterious in Brian Friel’s classic

    Gillen, Niamh Cusack and Nigel Lindsay deliver haunting monologues in director Joe Dowling’s affectingly sombre production

August 2021

  • Romola Garai, Tara Fitzgerald, Henry Thomas and Rose Byrne in Tim Fywell’s 2003 film adaptation of I Capture the Castle.

    Top 10s
    Top 10 books about family life

    From parents who meddle in their children’s relationships to ex-wives who loom over second marriages, families in fiction can be just as complicated as they are in real life

September 2020

  • Michael Sheen in rehearsals for 'Faith Healer' at the Old Vic, London, 2020.

    Faith Healer review – this virtual Friel is the stuff of miracles

    Michael Sheen, Indira Varma and David Threlfall are magnificent in Matthew Warchus’s enthralling livestreamed production of Brian Friel’s 1979 play
  • Michael Sheen in a performance of Faith Healer, streamed live and performed to an empty auditorium.

    Faith Healer review – Friel's spellbinder captures theatre's magic

    Michael Sheen, Indira Varma and David Threlfall are a superb trinity for Brian Friel’s powerful monologues
  • Michael Sheen will star in the ‘shimmering fable’.

    Lockdown culture
    Michael Sheen returns to stage in live-streamed Faith Healer

    Brian Friel drama promises ‘emotional thwack’, with star joining David Threlfall and Indira Varma at the Old Vic

March 2020

  • Peter Brook reads a play in the bath.

    Lockdown culture
    All the world's a page: the joy of scripts during theatre's shutdown

  • Rory Keenan as Andrey and Mariah Gale as Sonya in Afterplay

    Afterplay review – Brian Friel's Chekhovian parlour game

October 2019

  • Hedda with the good hair ... Heledd Gwynn as Hedda Gabler.

    Hedda Gabler review – Ibsen's stormy heroine checks her privilege

    Complex women are imprisoned in a world of male buffoons in this rich and remarkably modern staging of the seminal drama – but only Hedda can escape

August 2019

  • Conor O’Kane in Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City at the Guildhall in Derry.

    Lughnasa FrielFest review – art over troubled borders

    The annual celebration of the work of Brian Friel

August 2018

  • Phyllis Logan and Calum Finlay in Switzerland at the Theatre Royal Bath.

    The week in theatre: Switzerland; The Price; Aristocrats – review

    Patricia Highsmith’s most famous creation comes back to haunt her, while the ghosts are closer to home in revivals of Miller and Friel
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