About
20th Anniversary Presentation The Home Place (2005), Brian Friel's last full-length play, returns to business left unfinished by Translations (1980). It is 1878, nearly half a century later. A new drunken Schoolmaster O'Donnell is firmly ensconced in the National School, but this time it is his daughter Margaret, not his son, who is fraternising with the English colonists and anthropology has replaced cartography as English scientists rather than Royal Engineers intrude on the privacy of Ballybeg. Tensions rise as the first stirrings of the Home Rule movement are felt and the assassination of a local landlord threatens the easy coexistence of Planter and Gael. Sion Stables provides the perfect setting for this reading of the play, close to Friel's own home place in Killyclogher and built landlords at the very period the play takes place - a perfect harmony between play and place.
