THE LAST DAYS OF A RELUCTANT TYRANT

Abbey Theatre Jun 3-Jul 11 8pm mats Sats 3pm €18-€20/€15-€18

“My father was a Russian,” says a character in Tom Murphy’s The Morning After Optimism. “My mother was a Russian. But me – I take my time.”

Indeed, such is the originality and innovation of Murphy’s career that scholars have long wondered when the great playwright would get around to joining the vigorous Russian adaptation industry, a field dominated by Brian Friel.

Turning his attentions to Saltykov-Shchedrin’s neglected masterpiece The Golovlyov Family as the basis of his first new play in four years, Murphy could actually improve Hiberno-Ruthenian cultural relations. As an adapter, the voices that suit his own have tended to lean towards the more dry and satiric: Oliver Goldsmith offered more dramatic kinship than the beautiful complainers of Chekhov. So the economy, clarity and rich history of this 19th-century psychological satire, in which an iron-fisted matriarch battles against a usurping, hypocritical son, may provide the right meeting of minds.

Handing his play to director Conall Morrison, who was also entrusted with Murphy’s The House in 2000, and afforded a cast so accomplished it’s practically silly, Murphy is still not a Russian, but he’s certainly catching up.

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The Playboy of the Western World, Town Hall Theatre, Galway