'Lovers' - Winners and Losers

‘Lovers’ consists of two short, complementary plays, ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’, written by that great genius of Irish Theatre, Brian Friel, who turned seventy last year and is still held in the highest of esteem both in professional theatre and on the amateur circuit, where his plays are performed with great regularity.

Ironically, ‘Lovers’ is one that is rarely done, so Skibbereen Theatre Society’s artistic director, Fachtna O’Driscoll, is set to remedy this omission by staging the two plays together as ‘Lovers’ as the playwright meant them to be seen, because the contrast adds to the poignancy of both, when taken in tandem, and audiences can appreciate more where the ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’ titles came from. Very often, they are staged in isolation at one-act drama festivals.

The first performance of ‘Lovers’ was at the Gate theatre in Dublin on Tuesday, July 18th 1967. Direction and lighting were by Hilton Edwards and the décor was by Robert Heade.

In ‘Winners’, the two young lovers were played by Fionnuala Flanagan and Eamonn Morrissey, while the narrators were Niall Tobin and Anna Manahan. The latter duo played the middle-aged couple in ‘Losers’, with Cathleen Delaney as her demanding mother and Ruth Durley as the nosey neighbour.

The 2000 Skibbereen presentation has two separate casts, with the ill-fated young lovers in ‘Winners’ played by Denise Ni Chinneide and Tod McCarthy and the narrators by Catherine Field and Frank McCarthy. The lovers are a young couple preparing for their final school examinations and their imminent wedding. The girl is pregnant.

In the second play, ‘Losers’, the lovers – played by Carmel O’Driscoll and Gerard Courtney – are older, but their passion, at first, is no less real. It is their marriage that brings its share of compromises and unhappiness, mainly brought about by the wife’s mother, played by Brenda O’Driscoll, and their pious, interfering neighbour played by Colette Dullea.

While ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers tell essentially sad stories, they are not without Friel’s gentle sense of humour and the ironies of the characters predicaments are not lost on audiences.

These plays combine to suggest “the fallible hopes and disenchantments of the varieties of love” (D.E.S. Maxwell). They have become perennial favourites with drama companies and audiences all over the world and are well due this revival by Skibbereen Theatre Society.

This, in fact, will be the third Brian Friel production by them since the company’s formation fifteen years ago. The first was ‘The Communication Cord’ back I 1986, while in 1990/91, they enjoyed success on the drama festival circuit with ‘Philadelphia Here I Come!’

Fachtna O’Driscoll acted in the latter; now he is directing the latest Skibbereen Friel production, ‘Lovers’. In 1998, he directed the hilarious Bernard Farrell romp, ‘All The Way Back’ and in 1999, Martin McDonagh’s black comedy, ‘The Cripple Of Inishmaan’, which saw them winning several awards on the drama festival circuit both years and making the group’s successful debut at the Everyman Palace Theatre in Cork with the latter.

Now, in the spring of 2000, with a slightly different – but no less enjoyable – type of play in ‘Lovers’, it is hoped to build on this success and garner further acclaim for this talented group.