Brian Friel pulls plug on US version of his play
Copyright
It seems that while a playwright still has copyright on his plays you have to run any changes that you want to make past him or her before you make the changes to your production.
The production team in the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Florida didn’t do this when they prepared to put on Philadelphia Here I Come!”.
They edited some of the bits out of the play, left out three characters entirely – and added Irish music and Irish dancing to it.
Plug Pulled
So, Brian pulled the plug on it.
It opened on January 10th but had to close again.
They have now added the extra characters and are now rehearsing the original script and will open again on February 4th.
The publicity should do them no harm and Brian has got his play back to the original that he wrote – so everyone should be happy now.