With The Communication Cord Brian Friel does more than maintain his reputation as a master playwright. He establishes himself as one of the most courageous of writers: for this new farce is virtually a send-up of the sentiments so movingly expressed in his own Translations.
— David Nowlan, The Irish Times
Like Translations, The Communication Cord is set in a seaside cottage in the remote townland of Ballybeg in County Donegal, though the time is the present. Like that masterpiece, it too is preoccupied with language and the effects of language, and it addresses a characteristic Friel concern. As Seamus Deane writes, ‘the most sterile of illusions is exposed — that of a heroic past that has dwindled to a most unheroic present’. Brian Friel’s farce is brilliantly orchestrated and choreographed. And it is constantly hilarious.
