Review of 'Flann O'Brien: Plays and Teleplays' (2013), edited by Daniel Keith Jernigan

Alana Gillespie
2014 The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O'Brien Studies  
Hard on the heels of The Short Fiction of Flann O'Brien (2013), 1 Dalkey Archive Press has brought us Flann O'Brien: Plays and Teleplays, collected and edited by Daniel Keith Jernigan. 2 As the most significant collection of Brian O'Nolan's dramatic writing ever published, the volume is a valuable resource for Flanneurs. It includes the few plays that were staged during his lifetime, along with unpublished and unproduced plays which will undoubtedly delight readers, whether already familiar
more » ... O'Nolan's dramatic work or coming to it for the first time. Jernigan's selection is representative of O'Nolan's writing for the stage and the screen. A short introduction explains his choice of the volume's seven stage plays and seven teleplays. Each is briefly introduced and appears along with a few quotations and comments about reception and production history. Each (tele)play is presented with lists of characters and casts (where relevant), but without further explanation or detailed footnotes on production history, technical terms, or local words that may be unfamiliar to readers. This is in keeping with contemporary standards of the printing of plays, but because so little is known about O'Nolan's dramatic works, readers will likely find themselves wanting to know more about production history (or the lack thereof), contemporary reception, and so on. A further, perhaps small note on contemporary printing standards: in the work of a man who was so particular about even the correct misspelling of certain words, it is unfortunate that some typos were inserted where they were not in Claud Cockburn's Stories and Plays (1973) 3 or Robert Tracy's Rhapsody in Stephen's Green (1994). 4 One hopes an overzealous spellchecker is responsible for this minor vandalism. Overall, Plays and Teleplays has given scholars a single, attractive, and affordable paperback volume to begin the work of filling in the gaps in Flann O'Brien studies.
doi:10.16995/pr.3052 fatcat:wmwggspx3nhxrltrutbbsfjmgq