The present, 1994
Ballybeg Hospital
When the lights go up, we discover the three characters – Molly Sweeney, Mr Rice, Frank Sweeney – on stage. Each character inhabits his/her own special acting area – Mr Rice stage left, Molly Sweeney centre stage, Frank Sweeney stage right.
All three stay on stage for the entire play.
MOLLY: Oh I can’t tell you the joy I got from swimming. I used to think – and I know this sounds silly – but I really did believe I got more pleasure, more delight, from swimming than sighted people can ever get.
MOLLY: I think I see nothing at all now. But I’m not absolutely sure of that. Anyhow my borderline country is where I live now. I’m at home there… Real-imagined-fact-fiction-fantasy-reality there it seems to be.
RICE: Yes, I’ll remember Ballybeg. And when I left that dreary little place, that’s the memory I took with me. The place where I restored her sight to Molly Sweeney. Where the terrible darkness lifted. Where the shaft of light glanced off me again.
RICE: The thought, the bizarre thought that perhaps, perhaps – up here in Donegal – not in Paris or Dallas or Vienna or Milan – but perhaps up here in remote Ballybeg was I about to be given – what is the vulgar parlance? – the chance of a life-time, the one-in-a-thousand opportunity that can rescue a career – no, no, transform a career – dare I say, restore a reputation?
FRANK: We’re going for a long walk on Tramore beach. Then we’ll have a drink in Moriarity’s. Then we’ll have dinner in that new Chinese place.
FRANK: One day, out of the blue, a Friday evening in December, five o’clock…she wants to swim in the sea. And not only swim in the sea on a wet Friday night in December, but she wants to go out to the rocks at the far end of Tramore and she wants to climb up on top of Napoleon Rock… because she’s going to dive.
FRANK: Fishing on a lake called Lough Anna away up in the hills… Ballybeg got its water supply from Lough Anna and in the summer, when the lake was low, from two small adjoining lakes. So to make the supply more efficient it was decided that at the end of April the two small lakes would be emptied into Lough Anna and it would become the sole reservoir for the town. That would raise the water-level of Anna by fifteen feet and of course ruin the trout fishing there.
28 August 1992
Went to an eye specialist in Letterkenny yesterday. He says I have incipient cataracts (just the ageing process?) and perhaps glaucoma. He is to arrange a meeting with an ophthalmologist in Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry.
8 December 1993
Altnagelvin at 10am on Monday. Operation on the right eye – 1.15pm – 2 pm.
17 January 1994
I’m very uneasy with the new eye.
1 February 1994
The right eye is bullying me. I think I am sorry I had the operation. I will have to go back to the ophthalmologist. Wrestling with various kinds of glasses – driving, reading, TV.
15 July 1993
First stirring of a possible play. A man/woman loses sight at five years of age. Blind for thirty-five years. Sight (partially) restored. Have ordered various books and papers on this subject.
31 August 1993
Weary of reading about prostheses, nystagmus, visual and tactile experience, etc., etc. Back to fundamentals:
• A person is restored to sight
• The experience is enormously difficult
• The new world is a disappointment – the old world was better
• The person goes into a decline and dies
13 December 1993
Over the weekend I wrote the wife’s first speech.
20 December 1993
I now have something down for all three.
14 March 1994
Her name and the title of the play changed once more – now Molly Sweeney.
6 April 1994
The play, Molly Sweeney, goes to the typist this evening. The only emotion on having finished it is relief: to emerge, blinking, into the sunlight.
✭ Molly Sweeney, Book Jacket, courtesy of The Gallery Press
✭ Molly Sweeney poster, courtesy of An Grianán Theatre
✭ Molly Sweeney, National Theatre of Northern Greece 2019. Videos and photographs with kind permission of the Director of National Theatre of Northern Greece and photographer Tasos Thomoglou.
✭ Postcards of Donegal, Courtesy of Donegal County Museum
✭ Photograph of Tramore Beach. “Tramore Beach III” by niceguysean is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
✭ Photograph of Lough Anna. “File:Lough Anna – geograph.org.uk – 161737.jpg” by John Cromie is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
✭ Molly Sweeney (1994) by Brian Friel, Brian Friel Plays 2 London: Faber & Faber Kindle Edition 1998
✭ Extracts from a Sporadic Diary (1992-4): Molly Sweeney, in Murray, Christopher (ed.) Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews : 1964-1999. London: Faber& Faber, 1999, p.153-165
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