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.

Drama / 9 m., 6 f. / Var. sets. In rural Russia in the mid nineteenth century, a brilliant, anarchic young medical student arrives at the provincial family villa of his best friend, Arkady, for the summer vacation. He wants to despise the family for their imperturbable complacency and bourgeois effeteness, but he is tormented by conflicting emotions. His desperate action has tragic consequences. "The evening leaves you pondering not just the play's political implications but the ageless tragedy of parent child relationship." London Guardian . "Drama at its most stimulating and eloquent... has...

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.

Friel has written an historical play about Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who led an alliance of Irish and Spanish soldiers against the armies of Elizabeth I in an attempt to drive the English out of Ireland. The action takes place before and after the Battle of Kinsdale, at which the alliance was defeated.

The year is 1878. The widowed Christopher Gore, his son David and their housekeeper Margaret, the woman with whom they are both in love, live at The Lodge in Ballybeg. But in this era of unrest at the dawn of Home Rule, their seemingly serene life is threatened by the arrival of Christopher's English cousin, who unwittingly ignites deep animosity among the villagers of Ballybeg. The Home Place premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in February 2005.

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after twenty-five years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and...

A third collection containing: Three Sisters (Chekhov) (1981); The Communication Cord (1982); Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) (1987); Making History (1988); and, Dancing at Lughnasa (1990).

A fourth collection containing: The London Vertigo (after Macklin) (1992); (January) A Month in the Country (after Turgenev) (1992); (August) Wonderful Tennessee (1993); Molly Sweeney (1994); and, Give Me Your Answer, Do! (1997).

Part of the five volumes collecting together the complete work of Brian Friel, this first title includes: The Enemy Within (1962); Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964); The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966); Lovers (Winners and Losers) (1967); Crystal and Fox (1968); and, The Gentle Island (1971).

A second collection containing: The Freedom of the City (1973); Volunteers (1975); Living Quarters (1977); Aristocrats (1979) (March); Faith Healer (1979) (April); and, Translations (1980).