Tom Murphy

Born in Tuam, Co. Galway, Tom Murphy was an Irish dramatist who has written 25 plays, many of which were produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin or the Druid Theatre, Galway. His first successful play, however, A Whistle in the Dark, was first produced at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London in 1961. A devastating portrayal of the cult of violence in the Irish immigrant community living in England in the 1960s, it remains his best known and most often performed work.

Other plays include the historical epic Famine (1968), which deals with the Irish Potato Famine of 1848, the anti-clerical The Sanctuary Lamp (1975), The Gigli Concert (1983), and, for many his masterpiece, the lyrical Bailegangaire and the bar-room comedy Conversations on a Homecoming (both 1985). His last play is The Alice Trilogy, which premiered in 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre in London before transferring to the Peacock Theatre in Dublin.

Murphy has been the recipient of many awards, among them an Irish Academy of Letters Award, two Harveys Irish Theatre Awards and an Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award. A major retrospective of his work was presented at the Abbey Theatre in 2001. A novel, The Seduction of Morality, appeared in 1994. Tom Murphy lived in Dublin and was a member of Aosdána.