Give me your answer, do!

Brian Friel, author of the Tony Award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa, is widely recognized as one of the world's preeminent dramatists. His latest work, the rich and haunting play, Give Me Your Answer, Do!, is already an international success. Gathered together in the remote County Donegal home of novelist Tom Connolly and his alcoholic wife, Daisy, are: David Knight, a visiting scholar who is appraising Tom's papers (and, by inference, his work); Garret Fitzmaurice, a commercially successful writer whose marriage to Grainne is on the brink of disaster; and Daisy's eccentric father and embittered, arthritic mother. Over dinner, the long-smothered desires and fervent disappointments of this group are brought to the fore as the layers of each character are peeled away--revealing their mutual humiliation, mistrust, and resentment. In this heart-wrenching comedy, Friel calls into question the definition of success while also chronicling the tragic circular relationship between professional and personal pain."Gripping! A play of surpassing beauty and complexity, a lyrical and mysterious creation by a great playwright." --The Wall Street Journal

Give Me Your Answer, Do!

Literature & Fiction

FRIEL, Brian

Dramas & Plays

Penguin USA (P)

Molly Sweeney, by the great Irish playwright Brian Friel, tells the story of married couple Molly and Frank, who live in a remote Irish village. Molly has been blind since birth, but now a surgeon Mr. Rice believes he may be able to restore her sight. In a series of interwoven monologues, Molly Sweeney takes us into the minds of three people with very different expectations of what will happen when Molly regains her vision. A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Jenny Bacon, Robert Breuler, Rick Snyder

Molly Sweeney (Penguin Plays & Screenplays)

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Penguin Books, Ltd.

Lovers.

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

“Dispassionate eloquence and psychological honesty…. Brian Friel’s writing has such vitality and warmth, such kindly accuracy of observation.” – London Sunday Times From one of Ireland’s best living playwrights, this striking piece of dramatic writing is a daring piece of theater. Keeping the play’s three characters on stage at all times to speak directly to the audience, Brian Friel presents three points of view to the same intriguing tale. Molly herself, blind since she was an infant, tells of her world before and after an operation to try to restore her sight. Her husband, itinerant champion of good causes, talks of his passion to help her. Her once famous eye surgeon, now a whiskey-sodden recluse in Donegal, sees the operation as his chance to reclaim his reputation. Each of their voices interweaves, threading in and out with details, spinning a lush and sensate narrative, and carrying us effortlessly to an unexpected and poignant conclusion. Deceptively simple, yet richly multilayered—combining both an insightful story about the way we perceive our existence with an allegory for our times—Molly Sweeney is an Irish storyteller’s art to create an unforgettable theater piece, painting scenery and rousing emotions with nothing more than the simple purity of beautifully rendered words.

Molly Sweeney

Plume

From the author of Dancing at Lughnasa comes a new play. Gathered together in the remote County Donegal home of novelist Tom Connolly and his alcoholic wife, Daisy, are David Knight, a visiting scholar who is valuing Tom's manuscripts and, by inference, his work; Garret Fitzmaurice, a commercially successful author whose marriage to the contemptuous Grainne is on the verge of disintegration; and Daisy's parents - her dapper, kleptomaniacal father and embittered, arthritic mother. Absent from the occasion, but palpable in her very absence, is the Connolly's mentally ill daughter, Bridget. In an evening fraught with recriminations, evasions, and painful revelations, a tale of professional rivalry, private despair, marital unhappiness, and sacrifice unfolds. As these wounded souls engage in their self-mocking, acerbic verbal duels, layers of defensive posturing are slowly stripped away, exposing each character's hopes, fears, and fragility, and the uncertainty and self-doubt at the heart of the very human quest for recognition.

Give Me Your Answer, Do

Fed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and his humiliating job in his father's grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O'Donnell has accepted his aunt's invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg. With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.

Philadelphia, Here I Come! : A Comedy in Three Acts

Faber&Faber

Set in Londonderry in 1970, this gripping drama by the acclaimed author of Faith Healer and Translations explores the ongoing Irish "troubles" that plague the country to this day.

The freedom of the city

FABER

Lauded for his rhythmical and supple writing, charged with despair and enchantment, Brian Friel's play Faith Healer was first produced at the Longacre Theatre, New York, in 1979 and revived by the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2001.

Faith Healer

The action takes place in late August 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal. In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes of cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and rendered into English. In examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative.

Translations (Faber Drama)

FSG Adult

The Communication Cord

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Books by FRIEL, Brian