Brian Friel’s vanishing world

Brian Friel’s vanishing world

By 1965 Brian Friel was already finding success as a playwright – Philadelphia, Here I Come! would soon open on Broadway – but that same year he told Acorn, a Derry-based university magazine, “I don’t concentrate on the theatre at all. I live on short stories. This is where my living comes from. As for playwriting it began as a sort of self-indulgence and then eventually I got caught up more and more in it. But the short story is the basis of al…