1st Edition

Tom Murphy’s Theatre of Everyday Space

By Moonyoung Hong Copyright 2025
258 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

258 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

By the time of his death in 2018, Tom Murphy was widely recognised as one of Ireland’s most important modern playwrights. Ireland’s experience of rapid modernisation, emigration, and globalisation is vividly captured in his plays, challenging generic notions of space, place, and the nation. In particular, his drama reconfigures Irish theatre’s uneasy relationship with globalisation, with the... Read more

Introduction

 

Chapter 1. Social Spaces: Alterior Politics in Murphy’s Early Plays

-On the Outside (1959), On the Inside (1974): The Ballroom of Reality

-A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant (1969): The Small Town as Panoptic Dreamworld

 

Chapter 2. Diasporic Spaces: Dislocation in Murphy’s Tragedies

-A Whistle in the Dark (1961): A Cruel Necessity

-Famine (1968): Staging History and Trauma

 

Chapter 3. Liminal Spaces: Pubs, Clubs and the Underworld

-The House (2000): Home for Emigrants

-Conversations on a Homecoming (1985): Broken Promises of Homeland

-The Blue Macushla (1980): Neon Images

 

Chapter 4. Sacred Spaces: A Spiritual Quest

-The Sanctuary Lamp (1975): Restoring Faith

-The Gigli Concert (1983): The Politics of Magic

 

Chapter 5. Women’s Spaces: “Supermodernity” and Place

-Bailegangaire (1985): Restoring Place

-The Wake (1998): Materialism and the Female Body

-Alice Trilogy (2006): A Super Wonderland

 

Outro: Afterlives

Biography

Moonyoung Hong is Assistant Professor in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong. She has published in Irish Studies Review, Comparative Drama, Études Irlandaises, and RISE: The Review of Irish Studies in Europe. She is on the Executive Committee of the Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR).