A Festival of Brian Friel, The Curve, Leicester

Iconic Translations and underrated Molly Sweeney mark range of 80-year-old playwright

by Carole WoddisSaturday, 13 November 2010

Colonisation was never so potently or subtly represented: Jimmy (Ciaran McIntyre) and Maire (Emily Taaffe) in 'Translations'Production images Johan Persson/The Curve

Last year Brian Friel became an octogenarian. Yet the Irish playwright who has been greeted by the English like no other has so far failed to have that fact either celebrated or acknowledged with a retrospective festival by theatre’s major shakers and movers. It’s been left to The Curve in Leicester (that remarkable glass-fronted, inside-out, state-of-the art high-tech new theatre designed by Uruguyan, American-based architect Rafael Viñoly) to take the initiative.

Take away a name and its acquisition through the personal history of a place and you commodify it

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