DruidMurphy – Plays by Tom Murphy featured in many end of year reviews as the theatrical highlight of 2012. Below is a selection of some of these reviews:
DruidMurphy was the biggest touring theatre production in Ireland in 2012. When the curtain came down on Druid’s most ambitious project to date, there had been 100 performances in 12 venues across Ireland, the UK and the USA.
UK
The Stage 100 is the Stage’s annual power list, detailing the theatre and performing arts industry’s most influential individuals. Garry Hynes featured in the Directors category.
“One of the great directors of Irish theatre, Garry Hynes showed off her talents on this side of the Irish Sea in 2012, when she brought her production of DruidMurphy to the Hampstead Theatre. Druid Theatre’s production of Tom Murphy’s trilogy of plays about Irish emigration was one of the theatre events of the year and Hynes deservedly picked up the best director award at Theatre Awards UK for her work on the project.”
Ireland
“DruidMurphy was a riveting and shattering journey that led from the London Cultural Olympiad through Ireland and across the world. That was a suitable trajectory for this coruscating trio of Tom Murphy plays, stunningly directed by Garry Hynes, which traced a history of emigration and dispossession through drink, violence and hunger.” Peter Crawley
“The epic DruidMurphy cycle was a world-class piece of theatre-making.” Laurence Mackin
Irish Independent – December 29
“In 2012, Irish theatre found a master imagination again. And that was . . . Tom Murphy.” Colin Murphy
Irish Independent – December 29
“The combination of a hugely talented and impressive cast, directing by Garry Hynes, and the emotional power of Tom Murphy’s writing means you have a winner. My theatrical experience of the year without a doubt was DruidMurphy… an extraordinary theatrical event, a triumph for Druid.” Aedín Gormley
Sunday Independent – December 30
“The highlights of the year were delivered by playwright Tom Murphy, whom I hesitate to refer to as “veteran.” Garry Hynes of Druid gathered three of his finest into a triple touring bill of Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark and Famine, with an ensemble cast of breathtaking achievement and force.” Emer O’Kelly
“The year’s big theatre event was DruidMurphy, the revival of three Tom Murphy classics by Galway company Druid. Garry Hynes’s reappraisal of Famine, Conversations on a Homecoming, and A Whistle in the Dark had guts and gristle, but plumbed the vast lyrical depths of Murphy’s vision too.” Pádraic Killeen
Galway Advertiser – December 27
“Onstage, Druid once again dominated headlines, and justly so, with their monumental and riveting DruidMurphy trilogy bringing together Tom Murphy’s Conversations on a Homecoming, Whistle in the Dark, and Famine to create a theatrical experience of cumulative, shattering, power in which director Garry Hynes, her designers, and outstanding acting ensemble were all at the top of their game.” Charlie McBride
Galway City Tribune – January 3, 2013
“Theatrically, the high point of 2012 from a national as well as a local level was Druid Theatre’s celebration of Tuam playwright, Tom Murphy. DruidMurphy – consisting of three plays, Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark and Famine – opened in London’s Hampstead Theatre in June before travelling to New York’s Lincoln Center. It then returned to Ireland in July for a sell-out run at Galway Arts Festival and a national tour.
The first of the trilogy captured the darkness of smalltown Irish life in the 1960s and the second explored the fate of an Irish family who carried their old tribal ways with them, when they emigrated to England. Famine, meanwhile, was Murphy’s exploration of how the great hunger of the 1840s affected one Mayo community and destroyed everything that had held people together.” Judy Murphy
About DruidMurphy
DruidMurphy – Plays by Tom Murphy was a major celebration of one of Ireland’s foremost and most respected living dramatists and tells the story of Irish emigration through three of Tom Murphy’s greatest plays, spanning 1846 to 1970; Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark and Famine.
DruidMurphy – Plays by Tom Murphy is a co-production between Druid and Quinnipiac University Connecticut, NUI Galway, Lincoln Center Festival, and Galway Arts Festival. Druid acknowledges the continuing support of the Arts Council and Culture Ireland without whom this production and tour would not be possible.