IRELAND 2009 - Famous modern Irish Playwrights

A new series of stamps has been created to honour three of the greatest Irish playwrightsof modern times. In celebrating these three distinguished writers – Brian Friel, Tom Murphy and Frank McGuinness – we are acknowledging the central importance of literature, and particularly drama, in the life and culture of Ireland.

Brian Friel

It was 80 years ago, in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, that Brian Friel was born. He worked as a teacher in Derry from 1950 to 1960. When he then decided to take time off to devote himself to a career in writing, he had already had some success with radio plays and short stories. In 1964, ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come!’ was a major success in Dublin, London and New York, establishing Friel as a significant literary figure. His reputation was cemented by subsequent plays of the 60s: ‘The Loves of Cass McGuire’ and ‘Lovers’. More explicitly political works in the early 70s gradually gave way to studies of character, ranging from ‘Faith Healer’ in 1979 to perhaps his most celebrated work, ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’,in 1990.His most recent original play is ‘The Home Place’ which was named Best Play of 2005 by the London Evening Standard. In 2006, Brian Friel was elected a Saoi of Aosdána, the greatest honour that can be bestowed on an Irish artist or writer.


Frank McGuinness

The youngest of the writers honoured, Frank McGuinness was born in Buncrana, Co. Donegal, in 1953. After graduating from University College Dublin, he became a university lecturer, at the University of Ulster, UCD and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. ‘The Factory Girls’ brought him his first taste of recognition as a playwright in 1982. Three years later, his play about Ulster soldiers in World War I, ‘Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme’ was a great success, first at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, then around the world. This work won him the title of Most Promising Playwright from the London Evening Standard. His translation work includes adaptations of works by Chekhov, Brecht and Ibsen. He returned to poetry with his first collection, ‘Booterstown’, published in 1994. Then, in 1998, he wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Brian Friel’s ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’. More recently, he has written acclaimed plays such as ‘Speaking like Magpies’, specially commissioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre in 2005, and ‘There Came a Gypsy Riding’, in 2007.


Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy was born in 1935 in Tuam, Co. Galway. Like our other writers, he worked as a teacher. His first play, ‘On
the Outside’, was a collaboration with his childhood friend Noel O’Donoghue, written in 1959. His next drama, ‘The Iron Men’, was rejected by the Abbey Theatre, but was produced by Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal in London in 1961 with a new name, ‘A Whistle in the Dark’. Shortly after this, Murphy moved to London, returning to Ireland in 1970. His 1975 play ‘The Sanctuary Lamp’ generated much heated controversy, contributing to the dramatist’s decision to stop writing for number of years. The start of the 1980s saw some new work, but it was ‘The Gigli Concert’ in 1983 that truly saw Murphy come back in triumph. Other successful plays followed, also a novel, ‘The Seduction of Morality’, in 1994. June 2009 saw the premiere of a new work from this master of modern theatre, at the Abbey Theatre. ‘The Last Days Of A Reluctant Tyrant’ is a tale of hypocrisy and moral emptiness as a family disintegrates. With typography and layout by Steve Simpson, each of these exquisite stamps features an original portrait by James Hanley, RHA, of one of these great playwrights against the background of a theatre curtain.