POETRY: Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the inaugural production of Tom Murphy's first full-length play, A Whistle in the Dark, at the Theatre Royal in Stratford East.
To mark the occasion, the Abbey Theatre mounted a six-play Murphy season and Trinity College held a symposium on his work. This slim volume contains the papers presented at that symposium, together with the transcript of a public interview between Murphy and Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington, which was one of the highlights of the Abbey season.
The book opens with a short talk given by Fintan O'Toole on Murphy's writing methods, based on his reading of the playwright's worksheets in Trinity Library. O'Toole emphasises the deep fusion of intellect, feeling and disciplined dramaturgy which distinguishes the plays, yet concedes that the manuscripts do not tell all. The "precise point at which the material was transformed into the extraordinary audacity of imagination" inheres in the alchemy of the stage rather than the page.
Animated scholarly discussion of the plays themselves dominates the rest of part one, and it is here that the central value of the book lies. Six established critics of Murphy's drama are paired off to debate key forces and themes in his work from 1961 to 1985. The paper/response format works very well here, allowing contrasting critical viewpoints to be expressed through a focused analysis of individual plays.
Chris Morash ponders the predicament of characters who, though rooted in the harsh economic realities of post-war Ireland, are both hungry for and sceptical of some form of redemptive transformation. Shaun Richards highlights the way Murphy uses Christian imagery to deconstruct Catholicism, persuasively arguing that his work is "profane in the original sense of profanum, outside the temple, but not disconnected from sacred concerns".
And in his discussion of The Gigli Concert, Nicholas Grene tries to unravel the mystery of a play which denies the possibility of self-expression while at the same time leaving the audience with the impression that "something had been expressed".
Murphy himself offers revealing artistic insights in his interview with Billington. He speaks passionately about the impact of emigration, politics and music on his thought and art, and suggests that a metaphysical "search for home", for "a better reality which caters for this lostness, this longing that is within us all" lies at the heart of his dramatic vision.
If, as O'Toole suggests, the Abbey season was a sort of homecoming for Murphy, this book serves as a provocative critical guide to his radically homeless imagination.
Liam Harte is a lecturer in the Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages at the University of Ulster in Derry.
Talking About Tom Murphy Edited by Nicholas Grene. Carysfort Press. 115pp. €10