Event guide: The Weir, Kilkenny Arts Festival and other best things to do in Ireland this week
August 2nd-8th, 2025: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Brian Friel
Tracing the real people in Brian Friel’s ‘first great Irish play’
'Stock characters' in Philadelphia, Here I Come! were not only familiar Irish small-town figures, but inspired by real people
Making History Friel review: Everyman production throws a lot at Brian Friel’s clunky play
The drama’s radical idea is to locate disorganised rebel leaders in a drawingroom comedy, but it’s soon derailed by a insistent focus on the nature of remembering
‘People forget that Brian Friel was a radical’
Des Kennedy, head of the Everyman, is directing Making History, about Hugh O’Neill, earl of Tyrone, as the first production in the Cork theatre’s Everyman Made series
Fionnula Flanagan: I remember the ‘No Irish or dogs’ signs. I didn’t want to live in a country that took that attitude towards me
Put off London, the actor went instead to the US, where she spent 50 years as one of Ireland’s most prominent screen presences
Brian Friel’s plays to be brought home to cross-Border communities that inspired them
Five-year project will stage each play in a setting relevant to its theme and in the season it was set
Letters by Oliver Sacks review: Great light cast on neurologist, author and humanist
Kate Edgar’s compilation paints a detailed portrait of a sometimes shy, uncertain, excitable human who was also a deeply compassionate and open-hearted outsider
Amitav Ghosh: ‘Ireland is where the British created all their colonial methods, it’s where they tried it out first’
Acclaimed Indian writer Amitav Ghosh’s new work explores how the climate crisis has its roots in European colonialism
Poets’ prose: Thinking about questions posed by poems, from Seamus Heaney to Eavan Boland
The Frontier of Writing: A Study of Seamus Heaney’s Prose edited by Ian Hickey and Eugene O’Brien; Citizen Poet: New & Selected Essays by Eavan Boland; Questioning Ireland by Thomas McCarthy
Róisín Ingle on Kathleen Watkins: She loved life, poetry and Gaybo. Conversation flowed from her like music
Kathleen Watkins was one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met
Molly Sweeney: Brian Friel revival features fine performances and elegant staging
Dublin Theatre Festival 2024: Andrew Flynn’s production, with Genevieve Hulme-Beaman, Denis Conway and Manus Halligan, makes up for play’s slight staticness
Brian Friel: Beginnings by Kelly Matthews – The making of a highly competitive playwright
Broadway, here he comes. But first there were Ulster feiseanna, sports and his family’s literary drive
Dancing at Lughnasa review: Gate’s triumphant, breathtakingly beautiful revival deserves groaning houses
Theatre: Caroline Byrne’s production, featuring Zara Devlin, Peter Gowen and Ruth McGill, makes both dream and reverie of Brian Friel’s indestructible play
The Guide: the Kneecap film, Nicki Minaj and other events to see, shows to book and ones to catch before they end
July 6th-12th: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week
Crosswords & Puzzles
Crosswords & puzzles to keep you challenged and entertained
Common Ground
How does a post-Brexit world shape the identity and relationship of these islands
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