Brian Friel's The Home Place won Best Play in London's Evening Standard Theatre Awards yesterday.
The play, directed by Adrian Noble, premiered at the Gate Theatre in Dublin in February, and opened in the Comedy Theatre in London's West End in May. The Home Place beat off nominations for Mike Leigh's 2,000 Years, Richard Norton-Taylor's Bloody Sunday and Richard Bean's Harvest. Sinead Cusack presented the award.
This has been quite a year for Brian Friel in London, with successful revivals of Translations and Aristocrats. Speaking after the awards yesterday, Friel said: "I'm very pleased and very thrilled. For myself of course. And for the Gate.
"I'm pleased for Michael Colgan, who nursed the thing and composed it very skilfully."
A "Big House" play set in 1878, The Home Place was Friel's "most accomplished new play since Dancing At Lughnasa 15 years ago," wrote Fintan O'Toole in his review in The Irish Times last February.
The cast starred British actor Tom Courtenay, star of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Dr Zhivago and Irish actors Hugh O'Conor and Derbhle Crotty.