The House theatre review: Inventive direction breathes new life into Murphy’s family drama

This fascinating Druid revival of Tom Murphy’s The House repurposes the playwright for a more uncertain age. Premiered in 2000, and set in the 1950s, this is a typical Murphy picture of the Ireland of his youth, with its curse of emigration, its savage poverty, its stratified society of the haves and have-nots. He was a realist, a merciless and sensitive chronicler of small-town life. That was his box. But this production casts the Tuam playwright in a different, more expressionist, light.

Town Hall Theatre, Galway until Sept 21;then Gaiety Theatre, Dublin from Sept 26–Oct 6 Amy Molloy and Marty Rea star in The House. Photo: Ros Kavanagh This fascinating Druid revival of Tom Murphy’s The House repurposes the playwright for a more uncertain age. Premiered in 2000, and set in the 1950s, this is a typical Murphy picture of the Ireland of his youth, with its curse of emigration, its savage poverty, its stratified society of the haves and have-nots.

He was a realist, a merciless and sensitive chronicler of small-town life. That was his box. But this production casts the Tuam playwright in a different, more expressionist, light.

Christy Cavanagh is home from England, along with a bunch of other lads who return annually to the hometown for the builders’ holidays in August. He was the son of the de Burcas’s maid and raised by his brutal, alcoholic father after her death. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.