Plays 3: The Morning After Optimism / The Sanctuary Lamp / The Gigli Concert

by Tom Murphy

The third collection of plays by "The most distinctive, the most restless, the most obsessive imagination at work in the Irish theatre today" Brian Friel



"James in The Morning After Optimism is literally on the run, a comically exaggerated villain in flight form his crimes, seeking refuge in a fairytale forest. Harry in The Sanctuary Lamp is holed up in a church like a mediaeval outlaw, hoping to keep at bay the guilt of his messy life. JPW King in The Gigli Concert is a kind of cross between Dr Livingstone and Robinson Crusoe, a missionary who has become a shipwrecked loner, an Englishman sent to Dublin by a cult to convert the natives, and left there, beached and bereft." (Fintan O'Toole)

258 pages, Paperback

First published March 25, 1994

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

[Pádraig Mac Oscair · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is mostly worth reading for the 1975 satire on Catholic hypocrisy in Ireland "The Sanctuary Lamp", which got Murphy "cancelled" for several years and left having to resort to working as a farmer to make ends meet. Murphy is mostly interested in experimenting with structure and literary forms rather than being a great storyteller (it's hard to explain what plot, if any, these plays have beyond broad attacks on "authority" be it political, spiritual or familial), particularly when he has a point to make about society at large, meaning that these probably need to be seen to be properly appreciated.