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Aristocrats

by Brian Friel

A co-production between An Grianán and Workhouse Theatre Co

Director: Iarla McGowan

Wed 28 September to Sat 1 October 2011

Tickets: Wed all tickets €10, Thu to Sat €15/€12

Book online: Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat

Aristocrats

About the play

Set, like so many of Friel's plays, in the fictional Donegal village of Ballybeg, Aristocrats explores similar themes to his 19th century set drama The Home Place except here the focus in on an upper class Catholic family and the action takes place in the 1970s.

Ballybeg Hall is the decaying home of District Justice O'Donnell where those who come back for a wedding stay to attend a funeral. Friel's chronicle of three sisters and their 'peculiar' brother reveals the way 'in which the ache of one family becomes the microcosm for the ache of a society'.

First produced by the Abbey Theatre in 1979, Aristocrats won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play (1988) and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play (1989).

'a lovely play, funny and harrowing...Mr Friel makes the Irish condition synonymous with the human one.' Frank Rich, The New York Times

'an ironic, loving, imaginative, and all but faultless play. Make that a faultless play.' Edith Oliver, The New Yorker