The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays: Hostage; Bailegangaire; Belle of the Belfast City; Steward of Christendom; Cripple of Inishmaan

ISBN-13: 9781408106785 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 448 str.

Patrick Lonergan

Opis

Introduced by Patrick Lonergan, The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays brings together five major works from the Irish dramatic canon of the last sixty years in one outstanding collection.Behan's The Hostage, depicting the capture and deathof a British soldier by the IRA, was first produced by JoanLittlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958 and was declared 'a masterpiece' by The Times. Murphy's Bailegangaire (1985)portrays a senile old woman's recitation of an epic tale to her twogranddaughters who struggle to free themselves from her and exorcisethe past. Reid's The Belle of the Belfast City, winner of the George Devine Award in 1986, examines the tensions present in three generations of women in aBelfast-Protestant family during the week of an anti-Anglo-Irish rally.Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Play 1995 and was heralded by the Guardian as 'an authentic masterpiece'. McDonagh's 1996 play The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. McDonagh was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.

Spis treści

Hostage; Bailegangaire; Belle of the Belfast City; Steward of Christendom; Cripple of Inishmaan

O autorze

Brendan Behan was born in Dublin in 1923. A poet, short story writer, novelist and playwright, his works have found fame in both English and Irish languages. His sympathies being deeply republican, he spent some time in prison in his twenties.His most notable works include The Quare Fellow (1954), An Ghiall/ The Hostage (1958), Borstal Boy (1958), Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963), Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965), The Scarperer (1966). He died of alcohol related diabetes at the age of 41. Christina Reid is from the Ardoyne area of Belfast and her plays provide a working-class, female and Protestant perspective on her society. Her play Did You Hear the One About the Irishman? won the Ulster Television Drama Award in 1980, while her breakthrough work Tea in a China Cup was a runner-up in the 1982 IT/DTF competition for plays by women. Other plays include Joyriders, Reid's Clowns, The Belle of Belfast City (which won the George Devine Award), and The Last of a Dyin' Race, (which won the Giles Cooper Award). She has been writer in residence at both the Lyric Theatre, Belfast and at the Young Vic, London. Martin McDonagh is a London-born Irish playwright whose first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was the 1996 winner of the George Devine Award. It also won the Writer's Guild Award for Best Fringe Play and the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Newcomer. The play was nominated for six Tony awards, of which it won four, and the Laurence Olivier Award. Since then McDonagh has gone on to write multiple smash-hit shows and films and win multiple awards including an Academy Award for Live Action Short Film for Six Shooter (2005), an Oscar nomination, a British Independent Film Award for best screenplay, an Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild Award for Best Film Script and a BAFTA for best original screenplay, all for In Bruges (starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, 2008), and a Laurence Olivier award for Best New Play for The Pillowman (won 2004). Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. he was elected to Aoisdána in 1989 and was Ansbacher Writer-in-Residence at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 1990. His plays include The Pentagonal Dream (Damer Theatre, Dublin, 1986); Boss Grady's Boys (Abbey Theatre, Peacock Stage, Dublin, 1988), which won the first BBC/Stewart Parker Award; Prayers of Sherkin (Abbey Theatre, Peacock stage, Dublin, 1990); White Woman Street (Bush Theatre, London, 1992); The Steward of Christendom (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, 1995), which won numerous awards including the Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe Play of 1995, the London Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play, Lloyds' Private Banking Playwright of the Year Award and was nominated for an Olivier Award; and The Only True History of Lizzie Finn (Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 1995). More recent plays include Our Lady of Sligo (1998); Hinterland (2002); Whistling Psyche (2004); Fred and Jane (2004); The Pride of Parnell Street (2008); Dallas Sweetman (2008); Tales of Ballycumber (2009); and Andersen's English (2010). He has also published several works of poetry and fiction. Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, County Galway. He live in Dublin. He has received numerous theatre awards and holds honorary degrees from Trinity College Dublin and NUI (Galway). A six-play season celebrating his work - Tom Murphy at the Abbey - was presented at the Abbey Theatre in 2001. He has written for television and film, and a novel, The Seduction of Morality. His stage plays include On the Outside (with Noel O'Donoghue), A Whistle in the Dark, A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer's Assistant, Famine, The Morning After Optimism, The White House, On the Inside, The Sanctuary Lamp, Epitaph Under Ether (a compilation from the works of J.M. Synge), The Blue Macushla, Conversations on a Homecoming, The Gigli Concert, Bailegangaire, A Thief of a Christmas, Too Late for Logic, The Patriot Game, She Stoops to Folly (from The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith), The Wake, The House, The Drunkard, The Cherry Orchard (a version), Alice Trilogy and The Informer (from the novel by Liam O'Flaherty). Patrick Lonergan is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway, Ireland.