Sir, – Thank you for the Brian Friel supplement (October 3rd) – a necessary tribute to a wonderful mind. – Yours, etc,
JOHN QUINN,
Clarinbridge,
Co Galway.
Sir, – My introduction to Brian Friel was watching a black-and–White television version of Philadelphia Here I Come! back in the late 1960s. Later, I saw brilliant London productions of Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa, the Faith Healer and Molly Sweeney. His great admiration for the classics of Russian theatre was apparent in many of his plays, and I remember sending off for a copy of his translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters while preparing to direct my own amateur production of the work.
However, I also remember seeing another of his plays – The Mundy Scheme – at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in the summer of 1969. I think that it was the opening night and I went with a prospective girlfriend (bad move). It was absolutely and indescribably dreadful, and I recall that we did not return after the interval. I later learned that the Abbey Theatre had already rejected the play, and that it subsequently closed on Broadway after only four performances.
Many successful playwrights – and poets, painters, novelists etc, – have suffered such early failures in their careers. It always amused me, though, how Friel's many fans among the scribbling classes appeared to have excised The Mundy Scheme from their hagiographies.
But what really interested me, though, was that Friel went on to recycle the word "Mundy" as the family name of the sisters in his smash hit Dancing at Lughnasa. I always assumed that, by bringing back "Mundy", he was laying a ghost and atoning for the agony of that early flop. If that is the case, then how brilliantly his scheme succeeded; the scene in Dancing at Lughnasa in which the Mundy sisters perform that famous jig remains one of the most dramatic scenes in any play ever written by any playwright, anywhere. – Yours, etc,
ROBERT O’FARRELL,
Bath,
England.
Sir, – Since his death, the many obituaries of Brian Friel have focused on his importance as a postcolonial dramatist. Nearly all, however, have overlooked Friel's under-appreciated broadside against the greed and corruption of "patriot" politicians and property developers, The Mundy Scheme (1969). In the play an Irish political elite facilitates the selling off of beautiful swathes of the country for development – taste and culture abandoned in the name of "progress" and profit.
At the time critics panned the satire as unsubtle, but what better pre-echo of the Celtic Tiger era? – Yours, etc,
Dr BRYCE EVANS,
Senior Lecturer in History,
Liverpool Hope University.
Sir, – In our sadness at the death of Brian Friel, it is worth noting that the late Richard Eder, whose negative New York Times review precipitated the early closing of Faith Healer in April 1979, changed his views before the end of that year.
In a recap of the season at the end of 1979, he wrote that there were a few plays he regretted reviewing unfavourably that year and chief among them was Faith Healer.
Also worth noting was the resilience of Brian and Anne that dismal night in Sardi’s restaurant as they comforted their weeping friends reading the negative reviews in the early editions.
Coming full circle, last Saturday, the current theatre critic for the New York Times, Ben Brantley, recalled that the night he saw the 1994 Joe Dowling production of Faith Healer with Donal McCann "still blazes in recollection for me, as religious experiences of art do". – Yours, etc,
TED SMYTH,
New York.