David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We are here today to talk about Brian Friel. To quote Milton:

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast

The family might agree with me that this is a moment for celebration of one of the great talents of Irish theatre. It was a really imaginative use of the power of nomination by the late Charles Haughey to nominate Brian Friel to this House. The current Taoiseach has continued this tradition in nominating the director of the Abbey Theatre, Senator Fiach Mac Conghail, whose very eloquent praise of Brian Friel we have just heard.

I knew Brian Friel but it is extraordinary the way one's memory plays tricks on one. I thought I met him in this Chamber. I remember very clearly that in 1987 we had to meet in the ante-chamber. I have vivid memories of talking to Brian Friel during a division which I thought was in here but obviously I am wrong. All kinds of odd things can happen. I was intrigued to learn from the Leader's speech that Seamus Heaney was also a Senator. I must have slept through that one because I have no recollection of it. Perhaps that was an error of memory.

Fifty years ago or more, as a student in Trinity, I wrote the first review of "Philadelphia, Here I Come!" which I saw at the Gate Theatre. As Senator Paschal Mooney said, Paddy Bedford and Donal Donnelly were in it and it really brought me alive. It was one of the most exciting and thrilling moments in theatre that I can recall. The idea of having two physical actors on the stage - one playing Gar private and the other Gar public - was just electrifying. The acting was superb, not only by the actors playing the two principal characters but also by the man who played the father - a tragic, incoherent, isolated figure so familiar to me from my own experience of the poor people of the midlands. The pub interior was also beautifully presented on stage. The pub grocery and the old housekeeper are familiar from that period of Irish life. There was something really haunting about it. I wrote the first review in Icarus, the Trinity magazine, and when I met Brian here when he had been elected, he remembered it. I was so pleased that a man of such extraordinary distinction would remember the admiring scribblings of an undergraduate.

He is, as I say, a great playwright and translator and his translations of Chekhov were remarkable. He was a man of great humour whom I do not recall speaking at all in this House. I think he was nominated by Mr. Haughey as an accolade to thank him for what he had done for Ireland and I do not think he was expected to speak. I remember asking him why he did not and he said it was because they never talked about anything that interested him, which I thought that was a perfectly rational and reasonable argument. He spoke outside this House and he spoke from the heart about the Irish people. He also had a wonderful sense of humour. "The Loves of Cass McGuire", which I also saw, was terribly funny in some instances and had a pathos of exile. There is a wonderful moment when someone in America keeps writing back home saying they got a promotion. They say three times "This is a feather in my cap" and when they ask whether they should take the boat or plane home, one of the characters left at home tells them to stick all the feathers up their arse and fly home. I thought that was pricelessly funny.

We remember the humour and the breadth of his understanding, not only of nationalist Catholic people in the North but also his understanding of Protestants and the English. We remember his refusal to be narrowly judgmental in a republican sense, his breadth of imagination and lack of judgment, which was remarkable, as was his capacity to take apparently small, local and parochial things and turn them into the international and universal through the medium of art.

Many years ago, the late Frank O'Connor said to a group of us in Trinity that to be parochial was not dreadful because if one understood one's own parish, one understood everybody else's. The bad thing was to be provincial. There was nothing provincial about Brian Friel but he sure as hell was parochial. He made the parish universal and, as a result, it was represented in theatres in the west end of London and on Broadway.

We stand in honour and awe at the career of a modest man who did not parade his genius. There is no doubt that Brian Friel was a genius of the theatre. We should be grateful and celebrate his life. As I said at the beginning:

Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail

Or knock the breast

Brian was 86 when he died, I am now 72. When one is over 70, one is in the departure lounge and might as well get used to it. We are perishable goods and that is it. I hope he found solace and absolved himself of the fear of death. I am very glad to say I have no fear of death at all and I hope to God I do not acquire one on my death bed, which would be unfortunate. I am grateful for the life of Brian Friel because he has enriched many evenings in the theatre. Reading his remarkable short stories also enriched my life.