In this elusive, deeply spiritual play, the preoccupation with pagan ritual and ancient, primitive customs, which found such magnificent expression in Dancing at Lughnasa, is taken on to a higher, almost unreachable plane.
Here, Friel transports his audience into the heart of a virtually undiscovered country, where few travellers arrive and from which few leave. In the process, he makes his own creative sacrifice - setting aside the craft of the storyteller in favour of the ritual of story telling. It is a bold decision, made by a writer who is unafraid to spread his wings and fly - with his travelling companions or without.
It takes knowledge and understanding of Greek and Roman mythology to grasp the references that come thick and fast between three troubled couples, shored up on a rusty pier on the edge of Europe, waiting for a local boatman to row them across to a distant island.
Gazing out across the Donegal version of the River Styx, waiting in vain for their answer to Charon the Ferryman, they sings songs, tell stories and slowly sink beneath the mystical spell cast by the shadow of that spectral, floating, far-off world.
Helped enormously by Paul McCauley's luminous set, director Brian Brady and his excellent cast - Simon Wolfe, Andrew Callaway, Andrea Irvine, Michele Forbes, Laura Hughes and Alan Kelly - do well to capture the unsettlingly ethereal atmosphere, in which each individual attempts to compensate for the terrible problems in his or her everyday life. But the production's dreamy pace is not helped by Friel's own conscious slowing-down process, which creates real problems in the difficult second act.
It is left to Michele Forbes's brisk, loud classics teacher, Angela, to shrug off all the nonsense with votive tokens and chanting and give the play the ringing affirmation all so desperately crave.
Wonderful Tennessee is at the Lyric until October 21st. To book, phone Belfast 90 381081