Tom Murphy: A Life in the Theatre

Murphy’s summary of his early comedy of small town life, eventually staged as A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant, written before he left Tuam in 1962. (1/3)

The play, set in a small town in Ireland, covers a week in the life of young man, a shop-boy, who can neither live in nor leave his home town; who can neither marry his bank-clerk girl nor end the romance. The forces, imaginary and real, preventing him making a decision are: his own weakness, self-consciousness, class consciousness, community life – the provinces – the neighbours, the church, his parents, fear of the unknown etc. (2/3)

The play does not aim at a typical week or at realism in the sense of showing how the characters continually live. Its main concern is to recreate the feelings of a young man and his attitude towards, and his vision of, the environment he lives in. (3/3)

The ending of A Whistle in the Dark used in London premiere of the play staged by Theatre Workshop at Stratford East in 1961 in which Michael, deserted after he has killed his much loved brother Des, is left by his wife Betty and turned in to the police by his father Dada, assisted by the family hanger-on Mush. (1/2)

A policeman comes in the hall door. The father follows & pushes past him. Mush is seen standing at the door. The father points at Michael.)
Father: That’s him officer.
(The policeman walks over to Michael as the curtain falls.) (2/2)

In this revised ending Dada is isolated from his sons who gather round Michael and their dead brother Des.

Notes for The Sanctuary Lamp showing Murphy’s process of cutting back characters and scenes from initial drafts of a play, concentrating in on the three main figures, Harry the circus strong man, Francisco the juggler and the waif Maudie whom they encounter in a church. (1/2)

The circus: Am I interested in a dying circus? Cut circus scene.
I’m finding my essentials: The essentials are already there but I couldn’t see them because of all the peripheral stuff. (2/2)

In early versions of The Gigli Concert the quack psychiatrist, then called J.P.R, dies in the end, having watched a “replica” of himself ‘singing’ Gigli in the final sextet from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Here, as often, Murphy used old blank diaries as workbooks (1/2)

Sextet continues to its conclusion, J.P.R. dead in his chair. (2/2)

Critics complained that the first production of The Gigli Concert by the Abbey Theatre in 1983 was too long. Murphy’s signed note on the original TS ironically mocks his own tendency to write plays on an impossibly epic scale. (1/2)

The play submitted to the Abbey Theatre: A four hour play before the silly clots turned it into a three-and-a-half hour one. Many extras, too numerous to mention, as distinct from what can be seen on the stage or what can be seen in the Gallery Press publication.
Next year the penultimate draft: a wonderful five hour play. (2/2)

Early draft of Bailegangaire in which the old woman’s story is told straight through, almost without interruption, her granddaughter Mary’s silent presence only registered at the foot of the page. (1/2)

Bailegangáire
(A bed – the head-end down stage – and an old woman sitting beside it)
Now! And let ye be settling, my fondlings. Cause there’s a lot of people calling on me tonight. And I’ll be telling ye my nice story again. Yis, how Bailegangáire came by its appellation. Och ho-no ho ’gus haha, for isn’t it a good one! (2/2)

Snakes and Reptiles, TV play broadcast by BBC in 1968, re-used in The White House and Conversations on a Homecoming. The title is taken from the bitter comment of Michael, the returning emigrant who finds himself unwelcome in his home town, commenting on a statue of St Patrick in the pub.

The White House, a two act play staged by the Abbey in 1972, contrasting a group of young people in the White House pub in 1963 with their disillusionment ten years on. (1/2)

Act Two, Speeches of Farewell, set on the night of President Kennedy’s assassination, showing the enthusiastic decoration of the White House, was intended to come after the Act One Conversations on a Homecoming revealing the later dejected mood of the group. (2/2)