“Full of literary detail and narrative efficiency, ‘Lovers: Winners’ is an example of perfect one-act construction...Director Conor Bagley seems to have chosen his pieces for their poignant quality: In both playlets, romantic love is seen through tears...Neither production is a tornado of emotion, and the parameters of the evening are modest. But if you have a taste for the bittersweet, there is serious and quiet pleasure to be had in that tiny room: Some tempests are best seen in teapots.”
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“Bagley and his cast make the most of Friel's elegant, rather eerie conception...’Lovers: Winners’ packs plenty of life and loss into its short running time, and the unanswered questions about its characters' fates are likely to linger in your mind...’The Yalta Game’: Friel has failed to wrest much drama from Chekhov's scenario, which follows a predictable path...'Two by Friel’ only offers half an evening, although if you've never seen ‘Winners’, it may be worth a visit.”
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"This subject is explored with all the lyrical vigor, wit, and melancholy it deserves...Director Conor Bagley has chosen two plays representing different phases of Friel’s career...Contrasts between innocence and experience exist between the plays and within each one, and are highlighted, under Bagley’s careful and affectionate direction, by the lovely performances here, by turns playful and poignant...Bagley ties the two works together in the end with a dramatic flourish that’s affecting."
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"The attempt to draw comparisons between two disparate one-act plays by Brian Friel proves forced and effortful. In a program note for 'Two by Friel,' now playing at the Irish Repertory Theatre, director Conor Bagley writes, 'Although written over three decades apart, 'Lovers: Winners' and 'The Yalta Game' speak to each other in sacred whisperings.' In the event of seeing them performed back-to-back, those 'whisperings' prove so faint, they can barely be heard."
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"Theatergoers have a fresh opportunity to enjoy Brian Friel's brilliant talent in a double-bill entitled 'Two by Friel'...Both these one-acters reveal Friel's bent for experimenting with conventional dramatic forms...The acting ensemble is top-notch, as is the creative team...'Lovers: Winners' and 'The Yalta Game' neatly bracket Friel's career from its early to late flowering and show his posture as a compassionate writer about romantic love."
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“’Lovers: Winners’: Unmitigated cynicism always carries a subversive thrill, but Friel is so enamored with his own scathing sensibility that he can’t tell when it has run its course...’The Yalta Game’, a far more complex and disturbing depiction of the uncertainties, delusions, and outright lies that inform so much of what we call love...The actors strengthen the material...Bagley tries to visually tie the two plays together at the end, but it’s a clunky and unnecessary effort.”
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"In 'Winners,' Gillen and Kelly give strong, vital performances, even if they're not…always convincing as 17-year-olds. Redmond and Leona maintain their professional air but there's something about Leona, in addition to her angelic beauty, that makes your heart throb. In 'The Yalta Game' you get a thorough dose of her magic… Sitting inches away from her allows you to see the subtlety of her emotional truth, the honesty of her tears, the sincerity in her smiles, the affection in her eyes."
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