Garry Hynes, artistic director, Druid Theatre Company:
His work is quite simply one of the major achievements of 20th-century dramatic literature. It is an extraordinary and substantial canon of work, in its depth, length and breadth, and one which continues. His very real engagement with the world around him goes on, and his influence can be seen on the younger Irish playwrights. He's in the bloodstream. He continues to develop: we know that we can look forward to Wednesday night and unquestionably be enthralled and compelled by what we'll experience. There's nothing easy about his work. He is genuinely grappling, and that is what has compelled me to work so closely with him over 20 years. His universal understanding of human experience has been central to my work as a director: it has given me a continuing sense of the importance of theatre.
Conor McPherson, playwright:
I am a great admirer. The Gigli Concert and Conversations on a Homecoming are two of my favourite plays, which I discover more in each time I re-read them. In Murphy's writing, his characters' nerve-ends are very close to the surface. People are violently trying to force their ideas out into the open. They're on the rack of their own ideas, their cerebral agonising is deeply felt. There's a rough poetry about the writing, which has rawness and an honest vulgarity - a sense of the vernacular. His themes are universal, he deals with the inner aspects of being alive. He's digging deep, mining into the heart of being human, into the problems and struggles we all have. His people are often lonely, disappointed and exposed.
He's acknowledging the very ancient, ritual aspect of theatre, of the sense of identification and community between writers, actors and audience. There's a strong sense of something transcendent being enacted, but also something very human. At the close of one of his plays there is a movement towards healing: the audience feels better, having gone through a painful experience.
Mark O'Rowe, playwright:
Every play I've read by Tom Murphy seems to have come from a different author, the world of each one is so distinct. He's one of the few artists who make you feel excited about seeing his latest work. The power of his writing is in the emotions - his humanity overrides everything. His plays are very Irish, they don't seem to hit a nerve abroad the way other playwrights have. There's nothing cliched about his stories or characters, and the plots are never as important as the feelings. There's a sense of inspiration you get from his work, without being able to pin down exactly what his technique is.
Declan Hughes, playwright:
For me, Tom Murphy is the greatest living Irish playwright. His body of work, its range and intensity, his commitment to the art of being a playwright, his refusal to compromise, his fierce integrity - he's the man.
There are three classic plays: Conversations on a Homecoming, Bailegangaire and Whistle in the Dark. Their combination of a forensic examination of emotion with his scourge of sentimentality, his acute bullshit detection, both savage and funny. There's a political and social bedrock to his work: he's writing on behalf of people who are in some way dispossessed, voiceless.
He has a great ability to refer to his times but to transcend them. He may seem to be looking at that small-town Irish thing, but it's completely universal. In Bailegangaire and Gigli he gives us a dramatic epiphany. The exhilarating savagery in his writing is never just for nihilistic amusement, it's a search for humanity. He writes with tenderness but without sentimentality.
Ben Barnes: artistic director of The National Theatre, which will stage a retrospective season of Tom Murphy's plays next year
The position of Tom Murphy as a playwright of national importance is hard to over-estimate. If Brian Friel speaks to the heart of Ireland, Tom Murphy speaks to our souls. Or, more accurately, to the trouble in our souls.
He addresses the dangerous, satanic side of the Irish psyche. The hard-won lyricism of his writing is a match for his profound and troubled soul-searching. His idiom is unique, his language excoriating, his vision uncompromising. His characters are submerged in the dark night of his drama and when they emerge, they do so with only an edgy sort of redemption. It is profound and uncomfortable drama - not for the fainthearted. I sat with Tom recently mulling over a selection from the list of his plays for a retrospective of his work, which the Abbey is planning for next year. There are jewels in every rotation of the crown: The Sanctuary Lamp, Bailegangaire, The Morning After Optimism, The Gigli Concert.
Billy Roche, playwright:
I wouldn't be a writer today if it weren't for Tom Murphy. The Whitehouse (later reworked as Conversations on a Homecoming) and On the Inside and On the Outside use such wonderful metaphors to observe the changes in Ireland. Some of his observations were prophetic, now that every small town in Ireland has its Americanised gangsters and drug dealers. There is a beautiful, operatic quality to his work. He's an Orpheus going down into the underworld of the Irish psyche and then deeper again, into the libido. He uses psychology and mythology with great courage. He's exploring the search for love and the search for the feminine. But what I like most is his ability to handle the inarticulate, to make inarticulacy eloquent. There's a numinous quality to his work, it's hard to put your finger on it, but you feel as if you've been to a Mass. It demonstrates that there's something sacred about theatre. It's a mystery.
Frank McGuinness, playwright:
There's a specific excitement about seeing a new play by Tom Murphy. It's always a new adventure. He's never content to stand still. The only thing that's consistent about him is his experimentation. The first play of his I ever saw was The Sanctuary Lamp, in the 1970s. I think I was too young to get to terms with the sexual passion, but I was struck by the tremendous authenticity of it. It's probably still my favourite, if I had to choose, and I hope it will have a central place in the Abbey's festival of Murphy's work next year. There's a very specific music in his theatre, and a great intensity. His characters can scale extraordinary heights but remain believable.
Vincent Woods, playwright, poet and writer-in-residence at NUI Galway:
Without doubt, I think he's the finest living Irish playwright. He has an extraordinary sense of the dramatic and an absolute command of structure, combined with an ability to observe humanity. He catches us as a nation very well indeed. I'm re-reading his plays at the moment and am struck by his command of dialogue, its combination of great humour and a sense of tragedy. He has been under-rated, I think, but will be recognised in the future. His dedication to his art is a lesson to us all, especially the way he drafts and re-drafts his scripts. Bailegangaire was an astonishing moment in the theatre for me, and The Gigli Concert, like all of his best work, takes on the universal. There's a timelessness about his work, which encompasses a very human bleakness, the bleakness of reality.
Tom Murphy's The House, directed by Conall Morrison, opens at The Abbey on Wednesday and runs until May 20th, with previews tonight, Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m.