Give Me Your Answer, Do! by Brian Friel

Brian Friel, author of the Tony Award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa, is widely recognized as one of the world's preeminent dramatists. His latest work, the rich and haunting play, Give Me Your Answer, Do!, is already an international success. Gathered together in the remote County Donegal home of novelist Tom Connolly and his alcoholic wife, Daisy, are: David Knight, a visiting scholar who is appraising Tom's papers (and, by inference, his work); Garret Fitzmaurice, a commercially successful writer whose marriage to Grainne is on the brink of disaster; and Daisy's eccentric father and embittered, arthritic mother. Over dinner, the long-smothered desires and fervent disappointments of this group are brought to the fore as the layers of each character are peeled away--revealing their mutual humiliation, mistrust, and resentment. In this heart-wrenching comedy, Friel calls into question the definition of success while also chronicling the tragic circular relationship between professional and personal pain.

"Gripping! A play of surpassing beauty and complexity, a lyrical and mysterious creation by a great playwright." --The Wall Street Journal