Tom Murphy – författare

"One of the greatest Irish plays of the century" (Irish Times) "The language of the play is on a sort of inspired bender. It surfeits on its own potency. Tom Murphy's gift - here and in his other plays - is at once to stimulate and destabilise. It's a thrilling and intense experience to sit in a theatre and hardly to know where you are or that anything exists beyond the stage in front of you...This is a dark, funny, consuming evening of high points, breaking points, hangovers and hints - uncertain hints - of hope" (Observer)

The first collection of plays by "The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel Famine portrays the Great Hunger of the Irish in 1840s, with fresh pathos and insight, Patriot Games is a documentary drama charting the 1916 Easter rising and The Blue Macushla is a live gangster movie on stage set in the Republic of the 1970s with the politics of the Troubles emerging in Northern Ireland spilling over into the South.

The second collection of plays by "The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel In Conversations on a Homecoming, Michael returns from America to Ireland for a long-awaited reunion with his drinking companions: "A bilious bar-room comedy on the irreducible elements in the Irish character and the death of the Kennedy dream" (Observer), Bailegangaire "is as complex and haunting as one of Yeats' later poems...A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match...Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themeselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness. "Here is a potent allegory - of the need to exorcise the past and its myths if one is to be happy in the future." (Sunday Telegraph) Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, County Galway, his other plays include Conversations on a Home Coming, Balegangaire and A Thief of Christmas; The Morning After Optimism, The Sanctuary Lamp and The Gigli Concert as well as more recently Cupa Coffee and The Wake (1996), and She Stoops to Folly.His career has been closely associated with The Abbey Theatre, Dublin who have produced many of his plays.

The third collection of plays by "The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel "James in The Morning After Optimism is literally on the run, a comically exaggerated villain in flight form his crimes, seeking refuge in a fairytale forest. Harry in The Sanctuary Lamp is holed up in a church like a mediaeval outlaw, hoping to keep at bay the guilt of his messy life. JPW King in The Gigli Concert is a kind of cross between Dr Livingstone and Robinson Crusoe, a missionary who has become a shipwrecked loner, an Englishman sent to Dublin by a cult to convert the natives, and left there, beached and bereft." (Fintan O'Toole)

"The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel Modelled on Oliver Goldsmith's classic novel The Vicar of Wakefield, Murphy builds a comedy peopled with thieves, pimps, bawds, lechers and imposters who will prey on innocence unless God - or the ruling class - takes a hand. It centres around the downfall of Dr Primrose, who relates the misadventures that have caused his downfall and brought disintegration and ruin on his loved ones.

"The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel The Wake recounts the story of a woman, returning from the USA to her home town in Ireland. As her family learn of her years as a prostitute, she learns their attitudes and Irish society in general. A homecoming play, haunting yet fiercely comic.

"The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel

July, and the emigrant sons and daughters of a small Irish town in the 50s are returning from their two-week holiday, with their fat pay-packets, foreign spouses and romantic dreams of home.

A major play from a major Irish playwright "Bailegangaire is as complex and haunting as one of Yeats' later poems ...A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match ...Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness. Here is a potent allegory - of the need to exorcise the past and its myths if one is to be happy in the future." (Sunday Telegraph)

"The most important and controversial work to be mounted by the National Theatre for many a year" (Irish Times) The Sanctuary Lamp is set in a church. "Murphy, in the best traditions of Bunuel, takes a hallowed institution and populates it with social misfits who desecrate every convention in both thought and action...Murphy's savage indignation is unbearably true..." (Irish Times)

"A major statement by a major Irish playwright" (Irish Times) Famine portrays the Great Hunger of the Irish in 1840s, with fresh pathos and insight. "The macabre business of blight and death, of wakes and murder, of poisoned love and lost hope, and the scandal of an emigration policy that was in effect one of transportation...are some of the modern Irish theatre's most powerful and poetic scenes." (Observer)"A classic...Murphy's script burns through to the very soul of all of us" (Irish Independent)

Haunting new work from Ireland's leading dramatist Three ages of Alice. 1980, in the afternoon murk of her attic, is Alice losing her grip on reality? 1995, she has summoned a lost love to meet her by the gasworks wall. 2005, at the airport: if the worst has happened, why is it bearable?Alice Trilogy premiered at the Royal Court, London, in November 2005.Tom Murphy: 'The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination in the Irish theatre today' Brian Friel'Stevenson's mesmerising performance...Four stars' Guardian 'If you're looking for fine acting, it's here' The Times 'Rickson's production is spare, eerie and gripping' Independent on Sunday

Murphy Plays: 5 brings together four of the authors recent works: The Wake, Too Late for Logic, The House, and Alice Trilogy. The Wake recounts the story of a woman, returning from the USA to her home town in Ireland. As her family learn of her years as a prostitute, she finds the drewam of her homecoming turning into a nightmare. A homecoming play that is haunting yet fiercely comic. Too Late for Logic: "A major new play...these scenes are beautifully imagined, ache with feeling, and flower into incidents of piercing sadness or absurd laughter" (The Times) The House: "The most compelling indictment of emigration ever committed to the stage" (Irish Times) Alice Trilogy dramatises three stages in Alice's life: 1980, in the afternoon murk of her attic, is Alice losing her grip on reality? 1995, she has summoned a lost love to meet her by the gasworks wall. 2005, at the airport: if the worst has happened, why is it bearable?

When asked about the death toll from the September 11th attacks, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated simply and eloquently that the number would likely be "more than any of us can bear." He was right, of course. Yet often obscured in that inconceivable number is the fact that among those who died, as well as those who lived and continue to live, were many thousands of aviation professionals with names, families, lives, and individual experiences that are an important part of the 9/11 story. Some five years later, these stories are being told for the first time in Reclaiming the Sky. In the pages of this book, you will meet some of the people whose hard work propels a critical social and economic force -- the aviation industry -- and who on the morning of September 11th, were suddenly thrust into front-line positions in the battle to put our nation back on its feet. For many of these men and women and their families, the pain and after-effects of 9/11 are exceptionally acute, but their stories will serve as touchpoints for the thousands of people whose journey to closure is still ongoing. This powerful and ultimately uplifting book not only honors the heroes of September 11th, it also offers common ground to those in search of meaning and purpose in a changed world -- both in and outside of the air travel industry -- and gives Americans in all walks of life something they still seek five years after 9/11: the courage and strength to move forward.

Introduced by Patrick Lonergan, The Methuen Drama Anthology of Irish Plays brings together five major works from the Irish dramatic canon of the last sixty years in one outstanding collection. Behan's The Hostage, depicting the capture and death of a British soldier by the IRA, was first produced by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in 1958 and was declared 'a masterpiece' by The Times. Murphy's Bailegangaire (1985) portrays a senile old woman's recitation of an epic tale to her two granddaughters who struggle to free themselves from her and exorcise the past. Reid's The Belle of the Belfast City, winner of the George Devine Award in 1986, examines the tensions present in three generations of women in a Belfast-Protestant family during the week of an anti-Anglo-Irish rally. Sebastian Barry's The Steward of Christendom won the London Critics' Circle Award for Best Play 1995 and was heralded by the Guardian as 'an authentic masterpiece'. McDonagh's 1996 play The Cripple of Inishmaan is a strange comic tale in the great tradition of Irish storytelling. McDonagh was awarded the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright.

Murphy Plays: 6 brings together four plays by the author inspired by other great works of literature: The Cherry Orchard: In Chekhov's tragi-comedy - perhaps his most popular play - the Gayev family is torn by powerful forces, forces rooted deep in history and in the society around them. Tom Murphy's fine vernacular version allows us to re-imagine the events of the play in the last days of Anglo-Irish colonialism. It gives this great play vivid new life within our own history and social consciousness. She Stoops to Folly: Modelled on Oliver Goldsmith's classic novel The Vicar of Wakefield, Murphy builds a comedy peopled with thieves, pimps, bawds, lechers and imposters who will prey on innocence unless God - or the ruling class - takes a hand. The Drunkard is inspired by the American temperance play first performed in 1844 and attributed to W. H. Smith and A gentleman. A drama in five acts, it was perhaps the most popular play produced in the United States before the dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the 1850s.An epic family drama, shot through with dark humour, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant tells the tragic story of a family disintegrating, having lost its moral values and is inspired by The Golovlyov Family by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. It follows Arina who rises from servant girl to matriarch controlling a vast family estate and empire until she slackens her hold and loses her power to the hypocrisy and relentless grasping of her chosen son.

This collection brings together three of Tom Murphy's finest plays, Famine, A Whistle in the Dark and Conversations on a Homecoming. Together, they tell the story of Irish emigration - of those who went and those who were left behind. Crossing oceans and spanning decades, Murphy's three plays cover the period from the Great Hunger of the nineteenth century to the 'new' Ireland of the 1970s, exploring what we mean when we call a place 'home'. Conversations on a Homecoming: County Galway, 1970s. Even the humblest of small-town pubs can be a magnet for dreamers. Michael, after a ten-year absence, suddenly returns from New York and has a reunion with old friends, in that same pub 'The White House'.A Whistle in the Dark: Coventry, 1960Irish emigrants, the uprooted Carney family, adapt aggressively to life in an English city.Famine: County Mayo, 1846In Glanconnor village in the west of Ireland, the second crop of potatoes fails. The community now faces the real prospect of starvation.With an introduction by Dr Patrick Lonergan, NUI GalwayDruidMurphy, presented by Druid in a co-production with Quinnipiac University Connecticut, NUI Galway, Lincoln Center Festival and Galway Arts Festival, marks a major celebration of one of Ireland's most respected living dramatists and toured Ireland, London and the US in 2012.

An epic family drama, shot through with dark humour, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant tells the tragic story of a family disintegrating, having lost its moral values. Arina is an ambitious woman. As a servant girl she marries into the degenerative family she works for; her ruthless energy saves it from bankruptcy and she expands the family estate into an 'empire'. As matriarch she rules with an iron hand, her avarice insatiable, until she questions what it is all for. She slackens her hold and loses her power to the hypocrisy and relentless grasping of her 'chosen son'. Inspired by The Golovlyov Family by Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant is a haunting new work from leading Irish dramatist Tom Murphy, who has worked closely with the Abbey Theatre throughout his career. The play premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Ireland, on 3 June 2009.

BrigitI’d like it to be perfect . . . Beautiful . . . The statue . . . Unbeatable? . . . I’d like it to be what I feel . . . And I don’t know what that is.Set in the 1950s, Brigit, a prequel to Murphy’s critically-acclaimed Bailegangaire (1985), tells the story of Mommo and Séamus, grandparents living on the breadline, who are raising three grandchildren: Mary, Dolly and Tom, when Séamus is offered a job to carve a statue of St Brigit. Brigit premiered in September 2014, in a production by Druid Theatre Company, Galway, Ireland.Bailegangaire'One of the finest and most inventive pieces of Irish dramatic writing ever - the power of its language soaring beyond the loftiest aspirations of Synge and its insights on the human spirit cutting deeper than O'Casey's' - Sunday IndependentA Thief of a Christmas'Grand opera . . . both timeless and contemporary' - Fintan O'Toole