THEATRE: Alive in Time – The Enduring Drama of Tom Murphy: New EssaysEdited by Christopher Murray,Carysfort Press, 307pp. €25

HIS GREAT DRAMAS may encapsulate the eras in which they were created, but they also elude them. If we ask what are Tom Murphy’s times, the only convincing answer is that which we must give for all great playwrights: now.

So Fintan O’Toole suggests in his preface to a new collection of essays on Tom Murphy, edited by Christopher Murray and published to mark the playwright’s 75th birthday.

Murphy’s plays, at their best, are among the most powerful writings for the Irish stage of the past 50 years, continuing to engage with what O’Toole terms a “continuous present”. In his introduction, Murray sets out the task of the volume: “Situating Tom Murphy today involves seeing him within two contexts – Ireland and the world at large.”

In this new volume Murray has assembled an impressive range of essays dealing with most of Murphy's dramas, from On the Outside(1959), written with Noel O'Donoghue, to his recent adaptation of Shchedrin's The Golovlyov Family, entitled The Last Days of a Reluctant Tyrant. (The volume usefully deals with some of Murphy's lesser-known works, including his 1980 T he Blue Macushla.) Essays from important Irish scholars – Nicholas Grene and Riana O'Dwyer, among others – are linked with contributions from European, Japanese and North American scholars.

The volume divides into four thematic sections, with the first (perhaps the strongest) called “History, Politics, Society” and the second comparing Murphy with playwrights such as Behan, Synge, and – not as convincing, at least for me – Tennessee Williams. The third section examines Murphy’s texts in performance, and the final section looks at crucial themes of identity, family and religion.

Some essays are more convincing than others, but many draw on the Murphy archive at Trinity College. For example, Jose Landers, in her essay on Murphy's 1989 Abbey play Too Late for Logic, makes good use of the notebooks and drafts in the archive to trace the evolution of the play, and thus provides a valuable insight into his creative process.

Inevitably, the essays circle around Murphy's most impressive achievements, plays such as Famine, Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark, Bailegangaireand A Thief of a Christmas,all connected to the west of Ireland as a locus for his imaginative preoccupations. These plays draw out some of the most original and engaging insights: Aidan Arrowsmith's essay on gender, violence and identity in A Whistle in the Darkprovides a compelling account of Murphy's powerfully disturbing drama, with its nexus of violence, dispossession and exile, and Grene's essay Voice and Violencein Murphy acknowledges the specific grounding for some of these plays while suggesting that, from the start, he "reached towards a theatre that was not localised or representatively Irish".

The most persuasive of the comparative essays is O'Dwyer's Murphy and Synge: Insiders and Outsiders,where she argues that both dramatists share an insight into "the psychology of traditional rural community cohesion", and the linked "economic dynamic". Shaun Richards's essay Complicated Thorns of Kindred: Murphy's Interrogation of Familyexplores the idea that Murphy "has ruthlessly dissected the ideal of the united family, exploring the pain of belonging as well as the agony of isolation".

Collectively, these essays deepen our understanding of Murphy’s enduring influence on the contemporary Irish stage, and provide renewed insight into this compelling dramatic imagination.

Eibhear Walshe is a senior lecturer in the school of English at University College Cork