2009/2010 Season – Fall Show

A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant

By Tom Murphy

Directed by Catherine Driscoll

Produced by Sheila Bench

Biographies

Tom Murphy – Playwright
Tom Murphy was born in Tuam, Co. Galway in 1935; he was the youngest of 10 children. He became a vocational school teacher and in 1959 co-wrote his first play, On the Outside, with Noel O’Donoghue. His next play, A Whistle in the Dark, was rejected by the Abbey Theatre, as was A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant, under its original title of The Fooleen. However, in 1961, A Whistle in the Dark was produced in London by Joan Littlewood, to acclaim but much controversy. He emigrated to England in 1962 and wrote plays for BBC TV. However, some of his new work was performed in Ireland: Famine (Peacock Theatre 1968); The Orphans (Gate Theatre 1968). In 1969, The Abbey produced A Crucial Week. Murphy returned to Ireland in 1970 and most his plays have since premiered at The Abbey. He was honoured there in 2001 with a retrospective season of six of his plays.

Considered by many to be Ireland’s greatest living playwright, he holds honorary degrees from Trinity College, Dublin and NUI Galway. He lives in Dublin.

Catherine Driscoll – Director
Catherine Driscoll has been a member of TIP for several years. This is her fourth outing as director: Moll (2007), nominated for best director at the ACT-CO Awards; The Weir (2006), won best director at ACT-CO; and, I Do Not Like Thee, Dr. Fell (2006). A graduate of Trinity College London (Eng.) – drama teaching. Before moving to Toronto, she worked for RTE in Dublin; now works for CBC Newsworld. She is also a member of The Alumnae and will produce The Queens by Normand Chaurette in April 2010.

Sheila Bench – Producer
This is Sheila’s first time to produce. Usually you see her on stage either making people laugh or cry. Her brothers, Christopher Smith and Frank Smith wish her every success in her endeavour. Sheila and her brothers have been members of TIP for decades and she is proud to come from a very talented family. By the way, they are all true Dubliners.

A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant by Tom Murphy

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the first production of A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant. It took place at the Abbey Theatre and the successful run helped establish Tom Murphy’s career-long relationship with Ireland’s National Theatre. The relationship had a rocky start at the beginning of the Sixties; however, when both A Crucial Week (under its original title of The Fooleen) and A Whistle in the Dark were rejected by the Abbey. The Abbey may have been sensitive to official and public opinion because both plays are a blistering comment on post-war Ireland’s inability or unwillingness to deal with the problem of emigration, the problems it caused the many affected families and the often devastating consequences for those who emigrated.

In A Whistle in the Dark, which premiered to great success in Stratford and London in 1961, we see the appalling destruction of an already dysfunctional Irish family living in Coventry; in A Crucial Week, Murphy turns his searing intellect and lyrical pen on a young man in small-town rural Ireland of 1958 tormented with trying to decide whether to stay or to go. He is torn between the perceived freedom of living life abroad and the comfort – poor and suffocating though it is – of staying in his own place.

The wretchedness of the family in Coventry leaves us in no doubt that they would have been better off staying in Ireland. Yet, in A Crucial Week, we fully understand what’s driving John Joe away. He has no money and no prospect of ever earning a decent wage from the stingy grocer, Mr. Brown. He also has no freedom and no voice because both have been smothered by his overbearing mother who, in league with the priest, is determined to keep him at home. Her “smothering and slobbering” has already driven her other son away, but John Joe does not want to be “forced to stay or forced to go”. He wants “the freedom to decide and make the choice” for himself.

A Crucial Week can be seen as a metaphor for the Ireland of the late Fifties and early Sixties: a nation trying to find its own voice and shed its infantile state after centuries of colonialism. But, Murphy has written a play that still speaks to us in the 21st Century. John Joe’s Herculean struggle to be able to look deep within himself to find his own voice is a struggle for the ages. Ben Barnes (former Abbey director) once said of Tom Murphy, he “speaks to our souls. Or, more accurately, to the trouble in our souls.”

Catherine Driscoll
Director
October 2009

Castlist

John Joe – Eugene Duffy
Mona – Sarah Kidd
Mother – Rita Ferguson
Father – Dermot Walsh
Peter Mullins – Mark Hill
Alec – Derry Fitzpatrick
Mrs. Smith – Nora Rafferty
Agnes Smith – Ingrid Wirsig
Mr. Brown – Michael Sherman
Pakey Garvey – Howard Quinn
Miko – Howard Quinn
Fr. Daly – Liam Doherty
Pension Man – Jude Hession