Framed posters of various productions of his plays hang in the small Rathgar house of which he owns the upper floor and the garden. Aside from them and his Behan sculptures, the clutter is ordinary rather than arty.
Illusions are invariably dismantled in his plays. Murphy shares many of the qualities of Tom, the viciously honest, truth-telling schoolteacher in Conversations On A Home- coming who deftly exposes various liars with a surgeon's skill. Born in Tuam, Co Galway in 1935, the youngest of 10 - small wonder he invented a twin brother - Murphy is neither of the countryside not the city, he emphatically belongs to the Irish small town life. He smiles one of his rare smiles as he recalls how he and his friends used to laugh at anyone who came from even a couple of miles outside the town. "In Tuam we fancied ourselves as a high form of urban life, anyone outside the town was a buff sham, a red neck.
"My father left when I was nine. I was 26 when he came back. Well, he was back during holidays - but I hardly knew him as I emigrated when I was 26."
Young Murphy began his writing career with an adventure novel at 15. And that was that for several years. Following his friend, Noel Donoghue's now famous suggestion made in 1959 while the pair surveyed Tuam's Market Square that they write a play, Murphy began thinking about theatre. By then he was teaching metal work and O'Donoghue had joined his father's law practice. They co-wrote On The Outside. It enjoyed amateur success and was later produced professionally. In 1974, Murphy wrote its companion piece, On The Inside. "Noel is dead now, he died on August 5th, 1996." He says he was his best friend.
It must often have proved difficult for Murphy to sustain a career which began so early, so emphatically with the brutally authentic A Whistle In The Dark, written when he was 25 and first produced in London in 1961. The play belongs to the Angry Young Man generation of post-war plays and offers a searing portrait of an Irish family in Coventry. One by one the Carneys have left their native Co Mayo to seek their fortune in England. The opening moments are deceptive and appear to be variations on the theme of "maligned Paddy abroad". In fact it is about a vicious clan of five no-hope sons warped by their domineering father Dada, a monstrous package of ignorance, pride and self-righteousness.
Murphy remains justifiably proud of the play and on being asked to nominate his most prized moment from his work, quickly replies by referring to a scene from a German production of it in which the actor playing Michael expressed his outraged resentment at his impotence when dealing with Dada. "He seemed to levitate, he actually rose two feet off the stage." At the heart of this remarkable play is Murphy's rendering of anger, resentment and the bitterly eloquent articulation of the inarticulate. The level of emotion is frightening. Murphy understands the absolute anger of the powerless and powerlessness features throughout his work.
After A Whistle, he resigned his teaching job, settled in London and became a full-time writer. A Crucial Week In The Life Of A Grocer's Assistant, with its burlesque echoes of Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! was produced in London in 1967, and two years later at the Abbey. Famine, obviously a history play and one of three including The Patriot Game and The Blue Macushla - is as much about the disintegration of a society as A Whistle In The Dark chronicles a degeneration of a family. Murphy's career appears to have moved into distinct phases: a spectacular beginning eventually followed by a dramatic second wind.
He returned to Dublin in 1970. The Morning After Optimism followed within a year. The story of a middle-aged man fantastically encountering a youthful alter ego, it juxtaposes idealism with the reality of experience. As in A Whistle, truth emerges at the moment of betrayal. It is essentially a search play.
His restlessness and doubts took control as Murphy gave up writing to become a gardener. But the experience of living in the Dublin mountains proved disastrous and he returned to the city. The Blue Macushla in 1980 was judged a failure by everyone except Murphy, who, defiant at the time, still maintains the cast had achieved something special. When discussing his plays he tends not to defend them, but rather analyses the emotions and sensations of his characters with an unexpected sympathy which goes far beyond the fact that most of them "are" him.
If Ireland or at least Dublin theatre circles decided Murphy was finished, and that A Whistle would remain his moment of triumph, he proved them wrong with The Gigli Concert (1983) which has since emerged as one of the great Irish plays. A devastating Druid Theatre Company production of Bailegangaire in 1985 confirmed Murphy's status. It is a powerful work in which a demented bedridden grandmother reveals the true story behind a family tragedy. As demanding as would be expected of Murphy, it also inspired magnificent performances from the late Siobhan McKenna, and particularly Marie Mullen and Mary McEvoy. Earlier the same year, Druid had also performed Conversations On A Home-coming. Michael, the returned yank, attempts to embellish his disappointing time in the US. Tom, the bitter schoolteacher still trapped by his mother and exorcising his frustrations on his tragic girlfriend Peggy, dissects Michael's pathetically false version of the truth. ". . .Since you've nothing to offer but a few distorted memories, and a few personal tricks on the burning monk caper, I'm marking your card. You've come home to stay, die, whatever - and you're welcome - but save us the bullshit."
There have been rises and falls and times when he seemed on the edge, but Murphy is not a confessionally inclined individual. Increasingly as plays begin to peak and then fall, his work is now being looked to as representative of the best in Irish theatre. His achievement lies in the risk of writing dialogue which is neither intellectual, narrative nor lyric. He says of Kilroy, Friel and himself "we're all re-writing each other's plays, and again he stresses, his approach is instinctive. A play such as Too Late For Logic, either moves people, or leaves them tearing their hair out, it is a dense loaded work, a confusing chorus of voices and individual pain and resentment. For Murphy, it is a play about love, and it fulfills an ambition he always had to write a play about love, not sex. In it, Christopher, the vague self-deluding idealist, has allowed his academic career to ruin his marriage and alienate his daughter, and he seems to be going quietly crazy. Henry in The Wake will evoke memories of Christopher, except that Henry's suicide notes lack the seriousness of Christopher's suicidal tendencies. Precisely because of his forceful, authentic language, Murphy's abstract realism is often difficult to imagine from the page, he needs his actors to create the living moments and emotions he is interested in.
"You know everyone is supposed to have two dreams? Well, men are supposed to have two dreams. One is to own a sweet shop and the other is to own a fruit farm. I had my go at it and it didn't work. If you can't be happy in a garden, you won't be happy anywhere." He wasn't. Happiness may not be all that important to him. But he is aware that he is lucky to live his life as a writer without having to compromise. "Yes, I've been lucky in that."
The Wake previews at the Abbey Theatre on January 22nd, 23rd, 24th ,26th and 27th and opens on January 28th
