Thomas Kilroy obituary: Playwright of uncompromising spirit and intellectual courage

Born: September 23rd, 1934

Died: December 7th, 2023

With his keen intellect and uncompromising spirit, playwright, novelist and academic Thomas Kilroy will be remembered as one of the most distinguished and groundbreaking Irish writers of his time, one of the last of a generation that included Brian Friel, John B Keane and Tom Murphy.

Born in 1934 on Green Street, in Callan, Co Kilkenny, Kilroy was one of 10 children. His parents came from Caltra in east Galway and his father was a Garda sergeant. He attended St Kieran’s College, where, as a young sportsman, he captained the senior hurling team in 1952. He studied English at University College Dublin, where he was also elected auditor of the English literature Society. He later undertook an MA on the 16th century poet Thomas Nashe.

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On graduating in 1959, he entered the teaching profession, securing a position as headmaster at Stratford College in Rathgar. During that same decade he became a regular theatregoer, attending early productions of Jim Fitzgerald’s Globe Theatre in Dublin and London, and finding himself enthralled by the work of playwrights such as Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.

In 1965 he became a senior lecturer at UCD, lecturing on English, Anglo-Irish and 18th century drama. His first dramatic work was a radio play called Say Hello to Johnny, which won a BBC Northern Ireland prize in 1967.

Sixteen theatrical works, both new plays and adaptations, would emerge over the course of his lifetime, including Double Cross (Field Day Theatre Company, 1986); The O’Neill (Peacock Theatre, 1969); Tea and Sex and Shakespeare (Abbey Theatre, 1976); Talbot’s Box (Peacock Theatre, 1973); The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (Abbey Theatre, 1997); The Shape of Metal (Peacock Theatre, 2003); and Christ Deliver Us! (Abbey Theatre, 2010). Eight had their world premiere at the Abbey Theatre, making a deep impression on audiences at the national theatre.

His adaptations of famous works included Chekhov’s The Seagull (Royal Court, London, 1981); Ibsen’s Ghosts (Peacock Theatre, 1989); and Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (Abbey Theatre, 1996).

Kilroy had a knack for bringing to the stage themes and issues that were bubbling under the surface of Irish society, but which a conservative Ireland might have preferred to deny. In The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche (the Dublin Theatre Festival, 1968), he wrote the first openly gay character in an Irish play, focusing on themes of male sexual repression and fearfulness in Dublin.

In Double Cross, set during the second World War, Kilroy set into motion the stories of two real-life Irish men who found themselves on opposing sides of the conflict: Brendan Bracken, British MP and minister for information to the government of Winston Churchill, and Nazi propagandist William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw-Haw. In the play’s preface Kilroy said his intention was to explore the notion that “two men who so spectacularly denied and concealed their native origins might dramatise the deformities of nationalism more effectively than two patriots.”

For Christ Deliver Us!, his adaptation of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, he set the play within the confines of a 1950s Irish industrial school.

Quietly spoken, Kilroy was vigorous and intellectually brave in his writing. His plays reimagined the Ireland of the time, deconstructing old tropes, cliches of thinking and religious dogma, and he thrilled to the business and the energy of theatre, fascinated by staging and how the actors delivered his words.

He served as script editor of the Abbey Theatre from 1977-1978, as writer-in-association in 1998, and as a board member from 2010 to 2016.

He published one novel, The Big Chapel, which was shortlisted for the 1971 Booker Prize, but was pipped to the post by VS Naipaul’s In a Free State. A memoir, Over the Backyard Wall, was published by Lilliput Press in 2018.

Cosmopolitan in outlook, he travelled widely and embraced the literary traditions of other countries. While in United States for visiting lectureships at Vanderbilt and Notre Dame universities, he mingled with literary luminaries and read voraciously, learning about their writing programmes.

In 1976, having returned to Ireland, he established the first national writers’ workshop in Galway, which became an inspirational force in the decades that followed to other universities and colleges – they would eventually create writing programmes of their own. As a teacher, collaborator and professor, Kilroy was generous with his time and insightful on the hard graft of writing.

He was appointed professor of English at University College Galway in 1978, stepping down 11 years later to focus on his creative endeavours. In the 1980s he joined the board at the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry. He was also a member of Aosdána, the Irish Academy of Letters and the Royal Society of Literature.

Making his home in Kilmaine, Co Mayo, Kilroy was not a showy figure of the arts: he did not believe in being distracted by the celebrity aspect to writing or the hullabaloo of opening nights. He gave interviews infrequently and did not relish the spotlight.

For all the seriousness and the solitary nature of his work, he was convivial in the company of friends and much loved by them. Always invested in sport, he was well known for ringing pals to offer pointed and pithy analyses of Irish rugby.

His archive, The Thomas Kilroy Collection, is deposited at the James Hardiman Library in Galway University. His 2015 portrait painted by Colin Davidson hangs on the Abbey Theatre staircase.

In a statement, President Michael D Higgins said: “Thomas will be remembered as one of the most significant of a generation of playwrights.”

His private funeral took place at Shannonbridge Crematorium on December 10th. He is survived by his wife Julia, daughter Hannah May Kilroy and other relatives.