The Wake

by Tom Murphy

"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.

Genres: Plays

106 pages, Paperback

First published June 4, 1998

About the author

Tom Murphy (born 1935) is an Irish dramatist who has worked closely with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and with Druid Theatre, Galway. Born in Tuam, County Galway, Ireland, he currently lives in Dublin.

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished: 08.03.2020
Genre: play
Rating: B
#ReadingIrelandMonth20
Conclusion:
Irish playwright Tom Murphy...can do better!
My Thoughts

[Nick Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

For about a year I’ve been reading plays, the majority taken out of the city library. Having just read a work by Brian Friel I wondered what other Irish dramatists were to be found in the collection. There was one work by Tom Murphy: The Wake. I didn’t know anything about Murphy and I don’t know why The Wake, rather than any of his other work, is in the library. It doesn’t seem to be one of his more famous works, although it had a successful revival in Dublin a couple of years ago. In his depiction of small town Ireland, Murphy seems to be in a line between Brian Friel and Martin McDonagh, between the uncertain nostalgia of Friel and the bitter anger of McDonagh – but further reading of the three writers might show that this to be a false track. I have read that a reoccurring theme in Murphy’s work is homecomings, characters returning to Ireland. Vera has returned to her family home in rural Ireland from the United States. Her grandmother, who she had lived with when a child, has died and she finds out from a neighbour that this occurred sometime before her family informed her and there hadn’t been a wake for the old woman. Vera is estranged from her family and she ends up staying with Finbar, an old but disreputable friend. Vera’s siblings are respectable small town Ireland and they are horrified by her behaviour. And there is a property deal: Vera has been left a hotel by her mother; Vera’s brother, Tom, is putting it up auction for Vera, but his plan is to buy it for himself at a low cost – and he has a deal with another sister, Mary Jane. There is the symbolic clash: the respectable Ireland of the family, one built on business and economic interest (and, although there is not sense of religious devotion, the jolly but ineffectual parish priest is a family friend); against them is Vera, ‘living in sin’ with Finbar, on a drunk (she finds another ally in her alcoholic brother-in-law Henry, a washed out solicitor: part of the respectable world, but one who has rejected it and fallen into bitter self pity) – she is a failure in her family’s terms of success, there are implications and rumours that she had worked as a prostitute in the States. Vera, with her two drinking cronies, takes possession of the hotel. Her purpose seems to be to get her family together and have a wake for her grandmother. I presumed that once the family were gathered there would be an exposure of hypocrisies – all fuelled by alcohol. That only partly happens: fault lines within the family are exposed, it is not just Henry who has failed within respectable normality; but the family (and, by symbolic implication, Irish society) is largely at an impasse. The Wake largely operates within naturalistic conventions and it skilfully embeds its symbolic system within this realist world, but, while I thought the play started strongly, I wasn’t convinced the ending gelled in any particular resonant way. The Wake, however, has piqued my interest: it is a shame there aren’t any more Tom Murphy plays in the city library.

[WildWoila · Rating 1 out of 5]

An Irish play about a woman's homecoming and family conflict over inheritance. Lots of drinking & moaning, unclear what's actually going on. Not sure how this got on my to read list. Maybe it works on the stage?