ARTSCAPE: SO, how old is Tom Murphy? Fintan O'Toole, speaking about how Murphy is "one of the great contributors to the emotional GNP of Ireland over the past 50 years", slagged the playwright about it being his 80th birthday, to much mirth. It was a lovely celebration in the Abbey this week, full of theatre people, of Murphy's actual 75th birthday this week, and of the publication of a new book of essays on him (Carysfort Press's Alive in Time: the Enduring Drama of Tom Murphy, edited by Christopher Murray). When Murphy himself, whose writing is ageless, came to speak he said O'Toole had stolen his joke; that he had wondered, in light of all the 80th celebrations there have been recently, for Jennifer Johnston, for Brian Friel, "they must think I'm not going to make it!".
O'Toole said the impact of seeing a Murphy play for the first time – Bailegangaire, or The Gigli Concert, or The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant– was not to be matched, despite the depth you might find in subsequent productions, and talked about how Murphy's work has the capacity to shape who you are as a person. "It's the danger," he said, and he quoted Murphy on the most important question to ask himself when writing a play – "what is at stake?". Risk-taking and personal investment and willingness to place everything at stake was at the heart of his work. His "extraordinary courage and relentlessness and imaginative capacity" are seen in his "willingness to roll the dice with the entire house on the table, again and again". Which is why Alive in Timewas the perfect title for the book of essays, because all human culture, all art, involves the familiar made strange, and theatre is the "conscious re-immersion in that basic fact".
The event, marking the latest in publisher Lillian Chambers’s series of excellent theatre publications from Carysfort Press, was hosted by Fiach MacConghail, who said working with Muphy, particularly on Reluctant Tyrant, was one of the highlights of his own time at the Abbey. It highlighted a moment of change for Ireland, the “collapse of the chimera that was the Celtic Tiger”, and he quoted the play: “there’s more to it than money, property or prayers”. Without Tom Murphy’s “secret psychic history of Ireland”, he said, we wouldn’t earn the right to be called a national theatre.
Murphy himself was in great form with all the honour, and surrounded by the support that has sustained him. He thanked editor Chris Murray, “an idealist and an ideologue”, for his friendship, and O’Toole, “who is almost as old as myself”. He said “I’ve had five older brothers, and for the past few years Fintan has been like another older brother.” Whereas his own older brothers might have asked him why aren’t you richer, or taller, or tougher, from “this older brother over here” he gestured, he gets the vibe, “why isn’t he more famous?”.
He singled out former Abbey artistic director Ben Barnes too, for an “honour that is a favourite of mine”. Referring to the Murphy season of plays at the Abbey, he said “In 2001, in this building, the national theatre, Ben Barnes had an idea. People said it couldn’t work. But he made it work, and I am grateful to him.”
The last word on his birthday from Murphy: “If you are interested in my age, I’m frozen in time at age 22.”
. . . And Mr Chopin
Chopin is in the air for his 200th anniversary. Following the Ulster Orchestra’s Chopin festival last month, the birth of “the Poet of the Piano”, Fryderyk Chopin, will be celebrated next month by pianists John O’Conor and Hugh Tinney, with more than 30 other musicians from the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM), in a series of concerts at the National Gallery of Ireland. Some 75 works from his remarkable output for piano will be performed by both emerging and professional pianists, as well as some works from his chamber music catalogue. Following a concert on Monday, Mar 1, featuring pianists John O’Conor, Maria McGarry, Conor Linehan, Lance Coburn, Hugh Tinney, Anthony Byrne and Thérèse Fahy perform his Ballades, Scherzi and Andante Spianato in the gallery’s Shaw Room. Tickets for this special anniversary concert are €20 (€12 concessions) and are available from 01-6764412.
There will be a series of Saturday lunchtime concerts through March from RIAM’s emerging talent, then highlights of some of the composer’s chamber music works including his Piano Trio and Sonata for Piano and Cello feature on Mar 25 performed by RIAM staff including cellists Annette Cleary and Miriam Roycroft, pianists Réamonn Keary and Conor Linehan, violinist Michael d’Arcy and flautist William Dowdall. Tickets for the concert at the end of the month are €10 (€5 concessions), at the door.
