The Informer
Publication Date 24th, September, 2008
ISBN 9781904505372
Cost €10.00
The Informer, Tom Murphy's stage adaptation of Liam O'Flaherty's novel, was produced in the 1981 Dublin Theatre Festival, directed by the playwright himself, with Liam Neeson in the leading role.
The central subject of the play is the quest of a character at the point of emotional and moral breakdown for some source of meaning or identity. In the case of Gypo Nolan, the informer of the title, this involves a nightmarish progress through a Dublin underworld in which he changes from a Judas figure to a scapegoat surrogate for Jesus, taking upon himself the sins of the world. A cinematic style, with flash-back and intercut scenes, is used rather than a conventional theatrical structure to catch the fevered and phantasmagoric progression of Gypo's mind. The language, characteristically for Murphy, mixes graphically colloquial Dublin slang with the haunted intricacies of the central character groping for the meaning of his own actions. The dynamic rhythm of the action builds towards an inevitable but theatrically satisfying tragic catastrophe.
Reviews
The Informer
Reviewed by : Fintan O'Toole
[The Informer] is, in many ways closer to being an original Murphy play than it is to O'Flaherty...'
About the Author(s)
Tom Murphy
Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, Co. Galway in 1935. He has written over twenty-five plays and has received numerous awards and nominations, including an Irish Academy of letters award, two Harveys Irish Theatre Awards and an Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award. A major retrospective of his work was presented at the Abbey Theatre in 2001.
Table of Contents
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