I got to know Tom Murphy during the early 1960s in pubs along the Fulham Road favoured by Irish migrants to London with an interest in theatre. Already he had a reputation on the strength of A Whistle in the Dark, rejected by the Abbey theatre in Dublin, unwilling to stage the reality of Irish men lost in England. Tom was as tough and as bitter as some of his characters: he scorned the delusions of post-revolutionary Catholic Ireland and cited seeing in a pub a souvenir ear in a matchbox from a tribal fight.
He laughed with deep irony and sang beautifully, his tenor voice soaring in the Abbey bar after first nights of later plays. By then, he had been forgiven as a changed country accepted and even welcomed him to reveal and revel in primal elements of its imagined self.
After the premiere of The Sanctuary Lamp, in which more lost souls seek solace in a church, he took exception to an overheard discussion by a group of visiting American academics about its length: “I don’t write plays for people who complain about missing the last bus home.” But afterwards he cut an entire act, and commercially the play was the better for it.
He loved and was enthralled by women, at times flagrantly and at cost to both parties. These adventures surfaced professionally, notably in the later plays in which the totems of male strength and anguish were taken by female leads, no less strong and destructive.
In his later years he seemed to revert into that west of Ireland man with a navvy build and ease. He was driven to the end, revelling in productions that impacted upon audiences, gratifyingly vain on reviews of overseas performances and touchingly vulnerable to praise.
