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Full Description
Tom Murphy shot to fame with the London production of A Whistle in the Dark in 1961, establishing him as the outstanding Irish playwright of his generation. The international success of DruidMurphy, the 2012-13 staging of three of his major plays by the Druid Theatre Company, served to underline his continuing appeal and importance. This is the first full scale academic study devoted to his theatre, providing an overview of all his work, with a detailed reading of his most significant texts.
His powerful and searchingly honest engagement with Irish history and society is reflected in the violent Whistle in the Dark, the epic Famine (1968), the often hilarious Conversations on a Homecoming (1985) and the darkly Chekhovian The House (2000). Folklore and myth figure more prominently in the spiritual drama of The Sanctuary Lamp (1975), the Faustian Gigli Concert (1983) and the women's stories of Bailegangaire (1985). The range and reach of Murphy's theatre is demonstrated in this informed reading, supported by key interviews with the playwright himself and his most important theatrical and critical interpreters.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Murphy retrospectives
Part I: Society, history, reality
1. Dispossession and displacement: A Whistle in the Dark, On the Outside/ On the Inside, A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer's Assistant
2. Imagining history: Famine, The Patriot Game
3. Failure and success: Conversations on a Homecoming, The White House
4. The obsession with property: The House, The Wake, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant
Part II: Fable, folklore, vision
5. Beyond reality, beyond religion: The Sanctuary Lamp, The Morning after Optimism, The Blue Macushla
6. Words and music: The Gigli Concert, Too Late for Logic
7. Living with loss: Bailegangaire, A Thief of a Christmas, The Alice Trilogy
Part III: Interviews
8. Interview with Tom Murphy
9. 'Teaching Bailegangaire in America', Lucy McDiarmid (Montclair State University, USA)
10. 'Living on in Tom Murphy', Alexandra Poulain (University of Lille 3, France)
Conclusion
Endnotes
Index
