Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Theatre of Thomas Kilroy: No Absolutes

Theatre of Thomas Kilroy: No Absolutes

Lanters, José

Hardcover

Literary CriticismPlays

ISBN10: 1782052704
ISBN13: 9781782052708
Publisher: Cork Univ Pr
Published: Sep 15 2018
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.20
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.70 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Thomas Kilroy, Ireland's leading intellectual playwright, has, over the span of a fifty-year career, consistently resisted fixed categories and boundaries in both his stagecraft and the themes of his plays. In a close consideration of ten of his major works for the stage, and drawing extensively on archival materials, Lanters explores how Kilroy has challenged his audiences by confronting them with subject matter often perceived disturbing, controversial, even taboo within an Irish context, including homophobia, misogyny, marital unhappiness, mental illness, nationalist extremism, and religious fanaticism. Frequently drawing on styles rarely seen on the Irish stage, ranging from Artaud's 'theatre of cruelty' to Japanese Kabuki theatre, Kilroy's highly imaginative, thought-provoking, and challenging plays have alerted audiences to the complexity and inconstancy of the realities around them as well as the intricacies of the human psyche. Based on the reoccurrence of certain motifs in Kilroy's oeuvre, the present study divides his ten plays into three groups, characterised in broadly thematic terms. In The O'Neill (1969), Double Cross (1986), and The Madame MacAdam Travelling Theatre (1991), Kilroy considers the politics of identity and questions extreme forms of nationalism, in Northern Ireland, the Republic, and beyond. The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche (1968), Tea and Sex and Shakespeare (1976), The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde (1997), and Christ, Deliver Us! (2010) reveal Kilroy's ongoing interest in the fluid nature of gender and sexuality, and the tragedies that ensue when authoritarian figures or institutions seek to regulate and constrain their expression. The focus in Talbot's Box (1977), The Shape of Metal (2003), and Blake (2011) is on the single-minded, self-involved nature of great artists and mystics, whose unique visionary gifts render them at times 'monstrous' to the people around them, and to themselves.

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