Dear Mr Friel: Letters of a Celebrated English Theatre Director to a Young Irish Writer with an introductory essay by Brian Friel

In 1962, after happening on one of his short stories in The New Yorker, Tyrone Guthrie wrote a fan letter to Brian Friel. This led to a series of meetings, a long friendship and, famously, an invitation to the fledgling playwright to Minneapolis to be an ‘observer’ at the newly opened Guthrie Theatre. Within months of his return Brian Friel had written Philadelphia, Here I Come!. Constantly encouraging and supportive, this correspondence reveals some surprising lapses of judgement. In one long letter Tyrone Guthrie expresses his reservations about whether two actors playing Gar Private and Gar Public would work on stage.The playwright’s instinctive genius prevailed. Nonetheless this privately held cache of letters and postcards demonstrates the influence of an eminent and senior figure in the English-speaking world of theatre on Ireland’s leading playwright.

Tyrone Guthrie; Peter Fallon

Gallery Books
9781917371148
72 pages
€ 17.50
Hardback
Ireland
Diaries, letters & journals