The Theatre of Brian Friel

What sets this monograph apart from others devoted to this key playwright are its many illuminating, nuanced, surprising ‘framings’ of Friel’s plays by other plays from the Irish, English, and European stage. Murray’s most provocative insights arise from his imaginative juxtapositions, for example, of Philadelphia, Here I Come! and Miller’s Death of a Salesman … Murray’s fluency with theater history beyond the twentieth-century Irish stage gives his survey its fl[a]vor and edge … I would include [The Theatre of Brian Friel] … among the indispensable recent full-length appraisals of this seminal figure of the Irish stag. -- Brian W. Shaffer, Rhodes College * English Literature in Transition *
Murray’s strength is in his citation of those individual performances of the plays which he has witnessed over the years, and it is rarer to find the opening night of a Friel play which he did not attend than one he did. -- Feargal Whelan * New Theatre Quarterly *
Creative, fertile and fresh. … Murray’s kind of criticism is best described as classical, representing an exemplary standard within a basically traditional and long-established form or style. As a generalist analysis of Friel’s plays and their impact on contemporary theatre, this is the best, most extensive and most up-to-date study so far. -- Ulf Dantanus, UK * Nordic Irish Studies *
There are new insights here for those who know Friel’s plays well but a sound introduction for others who may be coming to him for the first time. By its combination of a chronological and thematic approach, it contrives to avoid a pedestrian plod through the life and works, its master argument capacious enough to include the many different ways Friel has adapted tradition to the conditions of modernity. The Friel that emerges from Murray’s book is a playwright of ideas, a literary playwright for whom language is all important, whose career has been dedicated to the development of an “aesthetic of modern tragedy”. -- Nicholas Grene, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland * Breac *
As Murray ably demonstrates, there is a great deal left to be said about this most elusive - and allusive - of playwrights ... [His] book-length critique is supplemented and enriched by a final section, 'Critical Perspectives', in which other leading scholars of Irish theatre ... offer alternative readings of Friel's drama. * Notes and Queries *