Reviewed by:

• The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer by Nicholas Grene
• Adam Goldstein

In a more than fifty-year career of diverse creations ranging from productions at iconic international theatres to Broadway, Hollywood, and beyond, Irish playwright Tom Murphy carved a long journey to establish himself as one of world’s most vital and dynamic playwrights. Recognized as an invaluable cultural voice in the exploration of Irish identity, Murphy’s canon explodes assumptions of colonial, postcolonial, and an ever-evolving Ireland through a myriad of dramatic forms, structures, and voices.

Cementing Murphy’s cultural significance, Irish president Michael D. Higgins wrote in his official statement following the playwright’s passing in May 2018, “The importance of Tom Murphy’s contribution to Irish theatre is immeasurable and outstanding. We have had no greater use of language for the stage than in the body of work produced by Tom Murphy since his earliest work in the 1960s. His themes were not only those which had influenced the very essence of Irishness, emigration, famine and loss—they were universal in their reach.” This notion of “universality” represents the exciting launchpad for Nicholas Grene’s [End Page 250] extraordinary critical companion book, The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer. This wonderfully comprehensive “deep-dive” into the vast landscape of Murphy’s storytelling endeavors to analyze each of Murphy’s works—both major and minor—in the hopes of granting universal viability for the playwright’s work, not only to his native Ireland but to the world of theatre at large.

Grene loads the beginning of his work with an assertion that Murphy’s writing, particularly in comparison to his contemporary, the globally lauded Irish icon Brian Friel, is “understudied and undervalued” (xiv). Garry Hynes, artistic director of Druid Theatre Company, echoes this sentiment in the 2018 New York Times report of Murphy’s death, that non-Irish audiences often struggle with his plays because Murphy does not gift his audience easy thematic, narrative, or personal access points. Murphy’s plays are challenging for global audiences to penetrate because as Hynes states, he is “unflinching in his rage about the way things were. He wrote with a very raw essence.”

This rawness of essence sparks the subtitle of the work “playwright adventurer,” which identifies both the greatness and the challenge of the playwright in critique. Grene proposes that Murphy is an “adventurer” in that he discovers a story as it emerges and adapts form to fit this emergence rather than write to a predetermined style, outline, structure, or theatrical vocabulary. Through an exhaustive exploration of archival information as well as via significant direct interviews with the playwright himself, Grene guides us into the heart of a writer who follows impulse, delves into the visceral of the moment, and who does not need to know in advance where a story is heading to arrive at powerful catharsis. The author skillfully implies that the challenge for Murphy’s work in achieving “universality” lies in the sheer difficulty in pinning down the playwright’s voice. Murphy’s worlds jump from the page as individual moments in the playwright’s mind that transcend one voice and instead mine numerous the-atrical vocabularies, sounds, tones, and tools in the pursuit of complex truths.

Grene examines Murphy’s plays thematically rather than chronologically. He groups works under linking categories that denote important connective tissues that span Murphy’s career. This structure allows the reader to view Murphy’s narrative complexity through a lens of recurring questions, themes, and ideas rather than through a basic linear chronology. Further, by looking at the playwright’s creative process in crafting each story, the book’s framework observes Murphy’s work as incredibly political by identifying it as utterly personal. Grene sees Murphy’s work as universal because it is so universally human despite its often-localized vantage point.

The first chapter, “Retrospectives,” lays out the playwright’s biographical [End Page 251] information as well Grene’s key strategy of exploring Murphy’s process rather than just product. Through this refreshing method of analysis...

审核人：

• 汤姆·墨菲剧院：尼古拉斯·格里尼（Nicholas Grene）编剧的冒险家
• 亚当·戈德斯坦

从标志性的国际剧院到百老汇，好莱坞以及其他地区的五十多年的创作生涯中，爱尔兰剧作家汤姆·墨菲（Tom Murphy）经历了漫长的历程，以使自己成为世界上最重要，最具活力的剧作家之一。墨菲的佳能被公认为是探索爱尔兰身份的宝贵文化之声，它通过无数戏剧性的形式，结构和声音，打破了对殖民地，后殖民地和不断发展的爱尔兰的假设。

爱尔兰总统迈克尔·希金斯（Michael D.Higgins）在剧作家于2018年5月去世后的正式声明中巩固了墨菲的文化重要性，他说：“汤姆·墨菲（Tom Murphy）对爱尔兰剧院的贡献的重要性是不可估量的和突出的。自1960年代汤姆·墨菲（Tom Murphy）最早创作作品以来，我们在舞台上使用的语言最多。他的主题不仅是那些影响了爱尔兰，移民，饥荒和损失的本质的主题，而且它们的影响范围是普遍的。” 这个“通用性”的概念代表了尼古拉斯·格里尼（Nicholas Grene）的[结束250]非同寻常的重要伴侣书《汤姆·墨菲剧院：剧作家冒险家》的激动人心的启动板。。这是对墨菲讲故事的广阔视野的完美综合“深入研究”，旨在分析墨菲的每件作品（无论大小），以期使剧作家的作品不仅在他的故乡爱尔兰，而且在世界上都具有普遍生存能力整个剧院。

格蕾恩（Grene）断言，墨菲的作品“被低估且被低估了”，特别是与他的当代作品相比，他的当代作品在全球广受赞誉的爱尔兰偶像布莱恩·弗里尔（Brian Friel）相比。德鲁伊剧院公司艺术总监加里·海恩斯（Garry Hynes）在2018年《纽约时报》关于墨菲去世的报道中也表达了这一观点，即非爱尔兰观众经常为他的剧本而苦恼，因为墨菲没有给观众以轻松的主题，叙事或个人切入点。墨菲的戏剧对全球观众而言具有挑战性，因为正如海因斯所说，他“对事物的状态保持了坚定的愤怒。他写得很原始。”

本质的这种原始性激发了作品“剧作家冒险家”的副标题，该副标题同时表明了剧作家在批评中的伟大和挑战。格蕾（Grene）提出墨菲（Murphy）是一位“冒险家”，因为他发现了一个故事，并根据故事的形式调整了形式以适应这种情况，而不是按照预先确定的样式，轮廓，结构或戏剧词汇来写作。通过对档案信息的详尽探索，以及对剧作家本人的大量直接访谈，格蕾恩将我们带入了一个作家的心脏，他一时冲动，深入研究当下的内心世界，而谁又不需要事先知道一个故事即将走向强大的宣泄。作者巧妙地暗示，墨菲在实现“通用性”方面的工作面临的挑战在于难以确定剧作家的声音。墨菲的世界从页面上跳下来，成为剧作家心中的各个瞬间，它们超越了一个声音，而是挖掘了许多戏剧性的词汇，声音，音调和工具来追求复杂的真理。

格蕾妮（Grene）按主题而非按时间顺序检查墨菲的戏剧。他按链接类别分组工作，这些链接类别表示跨越墨菲职业生涯的重要结缔组织。这种结构使读者可以通过反复出现的问题，主题和思想的角度，而不是通过基本的线性时间顺序，来查看墨菲的叙述复杂性。此外，通过观察编剧在编写每个故事中的创作过程，该书的框架将墨菲的作品确定为完全个人化的作品，从而将其视为政治上令人难以置信的作品。Grene认为Murphy的作品具有普遍性，因为尽管它经常被定位在有利的位置，但它是如此普遍地属于人类。

第一章“回顾”概述了剧作家的传记信息[第251页]，以及格蕾恩（Grene）探索墨菲过程而不是仅仅探索产品的关键策略。通过这种令人耳目一新的分析方法...