Friel Brian Friel: Plays 3

Three Sisters; A Month in the Country; Uncle Vanya; The Yalta Game; The Bear; Afterplay; Performances; The Home Place; Hedda Gabler
Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30987-0
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 736 Seiten

This third collection by Brian Friel contains two original works: Performances, which considers the relationship between the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janácek; and The Home Place, set in Ballybeg, Donegal, at the dawn of Home Rule. There are three masterful plays based on stories by Chekhov; and Friel's exquisite versions of Three Sisters and Uncle Vanya, of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and of Turgenev's A Month in the Country. Performances 'A minor work the way Thomas Mann's Death in Venice or Beckett's Endgame is a minor work. Deceptively brisk and light in tone but taut and gravely pregnant with meaning... for Friel, life creates its own symbolism and poetry, and so it does in this play.' Sunday Times The Home Place 'A rich, allusive, densely layered play, which has echoes of Friel's masterly Translations while reminding one that he has spent much of his recent life adapting and translating Chekhov... Friel hauntingly conveys the pathos of exile and the delusion of ownership.' Guardian Hedda Gabler 'Across the gulf of the 20th century one great playwright is talking to another... neither a simple translation nor, as the official title has it, or a 'new version', but something altogether larger.' The Irish Times

Brian Friel (9 January 1929 - 2 October 2015) wrote thirty plays across six decades and is widely regarded as one of Ireland's greatest dramatists. He was a member of Aosdána, the society of Irish artists, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Irish Academy of Letters, and the Royal Society of Literature where he was made a Companion of Literature. He was awarded the Ulysses Medal by University College, Dublin. Plays include Hedda Gabler (after Ibsen), The Home Place, Performances, Three Plays After (Afterplay, The Bear, The Yalta Game), Uncle Vanya (after Chekhov), Give Me Your Answer Do!, Molly Sweeney (Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play), Wonderful Tennessee, A Month in the Country (after Turgenev), The London Vertigo (after Charles Macklin), Dancing at Lughnasa (Winner of 3 Tony Awards including Best Play, New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, Olivier Award for Best Play), Making History, The Communication Cord, American Welcome, Three Sisters (after Chekhov), Translations, Aristocrats (Winner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play and New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play), Faith Healer, Fathers and Sons, Living Quarters, Volunteers, The Freedom of the City, The Gentle Island, The Mundy Scheme, Crystal and Fox, Lovers: Winners and Losers, The Loves of Cass Maguire, and Philadelphia Here I Come!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Friel, Brian

Leseproben

Act One

()

Olga Hard to believe it’s only a year since Father’s death, isn’t it? Twelve months to the day. The fifth of May. Your name-day, Irina. Do you remember how cold it was? And there was snow falling. I thought then I’d never get over it. And you collapsed – d’you remember? – just passed out. But a year gone by and we can talk about it calmly now, can’t we? And you’re wearing white again and you look … radiant! (.) The clock struck twelve then, too. Remember the band playing when they were carrying the coffin out of the room here? And firing the salute in the cemetery? General Prozorov, Brigade Commander! All the same, very few local people turned up. But it was a terrible day, wasn’t it? All that rain and sleet and –

Irina () Olga, please!

Olga There’s real warmth in the air today, isn’t there? It’s such a relief to be able to fling the windows wide open. And we won’t feel until the birch trees are in leaf. I’m sure they’re already in leaf in Moscow … D’you remember the day we left there? Eleven years ago. I remember it as if it were yesterday. Father had finally got his brigade and we were posted here. Early in May. Just like now. And it seemed as if everything was just about to … to blossom. And Moscow, beautiful, beautiful Moscow, was bathed in sunshine and warmth. Eleven whole years. What happened to them? But when I woke this morning and saw the heat-haze I knew that finally, finally spring had come. And I felt elated. No, exalted! And suddenly and with all my soul I yearned to go back home again.

Chebutykin () Rubbish-rubbish-rubbish …

Baron You’re right, Doctor. Only words – all rubbish.

Olga Masha, would you mind … please … My migraine’s back. All day at school and all evening at this – (.) It’s turning me into a crabbed old maid, isn’t it? Four years in that secondary school and every day, every single hour of every day, I feel my youth and my energy draining away. All I’m left with is a resolution, a determination, a passion –

Irina To go back to Moscow.

Olga Yes!

Irina To sell this house, to pack up here and to go home to Moscow.

Olga Yes! Yes! Home to Moscow! But it must be soon, Irina! It has got to be soon!

Irina Once Andrey becomes a professor he won’t stay on here. So there’ll be nothing to stop us – (.) Except poor Masha.

Olga Masha’ll come and spend the summer in Moscow – the whole summer, every summer!

Irina I hope to God it all works out. (.) Isn’t it a wonderful day! I don’t know why it is but I feel so – so joyous! (.) I’d forgotten all about my name-day until I woke this morning and suddenly I felt so happy, so happy! I just lay there thinking about when I was young and Mama was alive and life was so simple and there was so much happiness; and just to think about them made me so excited again.

Olga You really are radiant today. I’ve never seen you look so beautiful. Masha’s beautiful too. And Andrey would be quite handsome if he lost some of that weight. I’m the only one of the four of us that – that’s standing the times badly. Oh yes; I know I’ve become lean and hard – I suppose because those girls at school make me so irritable. But today I’m free. And at home. The migraine’s suddenly vanished and I feel younger than I felt yesterday. I’m only twenty-eight, amn’t I? So. All’s well. Everything’s in God’s good hands. All the same I’d prefer to be married and be at home every day. If I had a husband I would really love him.

Baron Talk-talk-talk. Endless silly talk. That’s all they do is talk. I meant to tell you: you’re having a visitor today – our new battery commander – Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin.

(.) ‘There are many sad and weary

In this pleasant world of ours …’

Irina Oh my God. What’s his name?

Baron Vershinin.

(.) ‘Crying every night so dreary,

Won’t you buy my pretty flowers?’

Irina I’m sure he’s ancient.

Baron () Sorry?

Irina I said I’m sure he’s ancient.

Baron Somewhere between forty and forty-five. Is that ancient? I think you’ll like him. Talks too much but he’s a decent man.

Irina I’m sure he’s a bore.

Baron No, he’s not! Let’s see: married – this is his second wife and he has a mother-in-law and two young daughters. You’ll hear all about them. He’s going round the town making courtesy calls and everyone’s being told about ‘my wife and my two little girls’. The wife has nervous trouble: wears her hair in a pigtail like a school-girl and every so often makes a stab at killing herself – just to keep him on his toes, I suspect. If she were my wife I’d have left her years ago. But he endures it. It gives him a valid reason for feeling sorry for himself.

Solyony With one hand I can lift only half a hundredweight. Right? But with two hands I can lift a hundredweight and a half. So what does that suggest? That two men aren’t just twice as strong as one man but three times as strong, maybe four or five times as strong. Isn’t that a reasonable deduction?

Chebutykin () ‘A cure for alopecia.’ (.) Must make a note of this. (.) ‘Mix two ounces of naphthalene with one half-pint of surgical spirits. Apply daily and dissolve.’ Apply daily and diss— Shouldn’t that be ‘Dissolve and apply daily’? Why would I write that nonsense! Rubbish-rubbish-rubbish.

Irina Darling Doctor, dozy Doctor.

Chebutykin What is it, little sweetheart?

Irina You’ll know the answer.

Chebutykin Of course. What’s the question?

Irina Why am I so happy today? I feel as if I had become ethereal – as if I were gliding along with the great blue sky above me and huge white birds all around me!