The Sanctuary Lamp
Arcola, until 3 April
Eigengrau
Bush, until 10 April
Furore fever still obsesses Irish playwrights. In Edwardian times there was nothing like a good old riot at the Abbey Theatre to get a new work established as a classic. Luvvie lore is replete with tales of mass walkouts and punch-ups at Dublin premières where the fisticuffs invariably end with the house being stormed by Sinn Fein while W.B. Yeats leaps on to the stage to appeal for calm and the Polish ambassador gets stabbed with a hat pin. Tom Murphy’s 1975 drama, The Sanctuary Lamp, seeks the rowdy affirmation of this tradition.
Murphy has read deeply and widely but he writes narrowly and superficially, and although he’s keen to revive some aspects of Attic dramaturgy — the static stage and the extended essay in poetic oratory — he forgets to include a plot or any kind of immediate action.
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