Murphy Plays: 3: The Morning After Optimism; The Sanctuary Lamp; The Gigli Concert

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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)

Author Bio

Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, County Galway. He live in Dublin. He has received numerous theatre awards and holds honorary degrees from Trinity College Dublin and NUI (Galway). A six-play season celebrating his work - Tom Murphy at the Abbey - was presented at the Abbey Theatre in 2001. He has written for television and film, and a novel, The Seduction of Morality. His stage plays include On the Outside (with Noel O'Donoghue), A Whistle in the Dark, A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer's Assistant, Famine, The Morning After Optimism, The White House, On the Inside, The Sanctuary Lamp, Epitaph Under Ether (a compilation from the works of J.M. Synge), The Blue Macushla, Conversations on a Homecoming, The Gigli Concert, Bailegangaire, A Thief of a Christmas, Too Late for Logic, The Patriot Game, She Stoops to Folly (from The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith), The Wake, The House, The Drunkard, The Cherry Orchard (a version), Alice Trilogy and The Informer (from the novel by Liam O'Flaherty).