Just over five years since the death of Brian Friel, and 40 years since Field Day Theatre Company’s seminal production of his play Translations, the great playwright is remembered in a special programme on Sunday Miscellany. Here, theatre director Joe Dowling pays his tribute.

Urbs Antiqua Fuit

As a stage-struck teenager in the 1960s, I saw every play that my school schedule and my limited pocket money would allow. Some were mediocre, many were impressive, but only one changed my life. Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! at The Gaiety in 1964 and I saw it several times. This play spoke to me in profound ways and confirmed a growing belief that being part the theatre was my only possible career choice.

In 1977, I got the chance to meet my hero when Tomás MacAnna, then artistic director of The Abbey Theatre, organized a meeting with a view to me directing Friel's latest play, Living Quarters.

Without Tomás's gregarious personality, the meeting would have been a complete disaster. Shy by nature and anxious not to seem stupid before the great man, I had very little to add to the conversation. Friel also seemed diffident and non-committal and I was sure that I had blown any chance to work with him. Luckily, he overlooked my nervousness and I got to direct the play. Since then, I have directed his plays many times in Ireland and abroad and that work has proved the most significant artistic collaboration of my career.

Translations is one of Friel's greatest plays. Its first production, so ably directed by Art Ó Briain, inaugurated Field Day Theatre Company and the premiere in Derry's Guildhall in 1980 was one of the most significant events in recent Irish theatre history.

I was beyond flattered to be asked to direct the American premiere at The Manhattan Theatre Club the following year.

The distinguished Irish-American actor, Barnard Hughes played Hugh Mór O Donnell, the hedge-school master. Barney had great natural instincts. But he had some difficulty understanding the final speech of the play which begins: "Urbs antiqua fuit, there was an ancient city, which 'tis said that Juno loved above all the lands…"

The speech links the fall of Thebes with the destruction of native Irish culture through the 19th century. I assured Barney that Brian would make it all clear when he arrived later in the rehearsal process.

Brian had barely taken off his coat when Barney asked plaintively, "What does this speech mean?" Brian's response was typical of him. "I don't know, Barney. What do you think?" Barney looked at me in absolute despair: "Even the goddamn playwright doesn't know what it means!" By the time we opened the play, Barney delivered that speech movingly and with absolute confidence.

Joe Dowling

(Photo by Bobbie Hanvey)

You can hear Joe reading his full piece on Brian Friel for Sunday Miscellany, by clicking above. And you can hear the full Miscellany Friel tribute programme from Sunday 13 December 2020, by going here.