Tom Murphy

A senile bedridden old woman rehearses over and over again an epic tale of a village laughing match. Meanwhile her two granddaughters struggle to release themselves from the prison of remembered unhappiness.

"JPW King is an English, upper-middle-class 'dynamatologist' -- a quack psychologist -- living in Dublin. Caught between the demands of Mona, his mistress, Helen, the unattainable love of his life and an insatiable taste for vodka, the major question is how to get through the day. Then a client walks in to his office -- an Irish man who wants to sing like Beniamino Gigli."--back cover.

His shirt is black, jeans are black, and shaggy black hair falls into his eyes. And when Gavin looks up at Delilah, the dark eyes shadowed with bluish circles seem to flicker to life. He lives in that house, the one at the edge of town. Spooky and maybe haunted. Something worse than haunted. And Gavin is trapped by its secrets. Delilah and Gavin can t resist each other. But staying together will exact a price beyond their imagining.

This collection brings together three of Tom Murphy's finest plays, Famine, A Whistle in the Dark and Conversations on a Homecoming. Together, they tell the story of Irish emigration -- of those who went and those who were left behind. Crossing oceans and spanning decades, Murphy's three plays cover the period from the Great Hunger of the nineteenth century to the 'new' Ireland of the 1970s, exploring what we mean when we call a place 'home'. Conversations on a Homecoming: County Galway, 1970s. Even the humblest of small-town pubs can be a magnet for dreamers. Michael, after a ten-year absence, suddenly returns from New York and has a reunion with old friends, in that same pub 'The White House'. A Whistle in the Dark: Coventry, 1960. Irish emigrants, the uprooted Carney family, adapt aggressively to life in an English city. Famine: County Mayo, 1846. In Glanconnor village in the west of Ireland, the second crop of potatoes fails. The community now faces the real prospect of starvation. DruidMurphy, presented by Druid in a co-production with Quinnipiac University Connecticut, NUI Galway, Lincoln Center Festival and Galway Arts Festival, marks a major celebration of one of Ireland's most respected living dramatists and toured Ireland, London and the US in 2012.--Publisher website.