A Whistle in the Dark

by Tom Murphy

Tom Murphy's early masterpiece, A Whistle in the Dark depicts the reunion of an Irish family in a picture of Irishmen 'over here' asserting themselves in one of England's post-war dream cities.

Michael Carney has left Mayo for Coventry, hoping to leave behind his homeland and his past with modest ambitions for a decent job and respectable family. However, he is relentlessly pursued by his a past that is both the flesh of his own family and the soured spirit of a haunted, marginalised people. With tragic inevitability, the impossibility of escape from his own dark history becomes all too obvious.

Produced to a mixture of acclaim and notoriety by Theatre Royal, Stratford East in 1961, Whistle in the Dark is now regarded as a modern classic.

'It is a considerable and refreshing shock to encounter this clenched fist of a play...National identity has been a theme in contemporary Irish drama common to Murphy, Friel and McGuinness. Nothing has been so brutish and direct, though, as this picture of Irishmen "over here" asserting themselves in one of England's post-war dream cities.' ( Financial Times )

'A play worthy of every tribute.' ( The Times )

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Irish Literature, 20th Century

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

Reviews

[Keith Bruton · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.7
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A  Whistle in the Dark by Tom Murphy (1961)
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Murphy was an Irish playwright who died in 2018 leaving us with almost 30 plays and a novel
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A three act play with a climactic ending. Michael lives in England with his English partner Betty. His brothers are with him and he also gets a visit from his father from Ireland. The family is violent and Michael seems to be the only sensible one in the family until he is pushed.
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Harold Pinter's play Homecoming was compared to this one which came out in 1965. Which I agree with. The setting and subject matter of family and violence are both featured in the play.
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I very much enjoyed this play. Once you get over act 1... the tension builds in the home and between the brothers.

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brutal, unforgiving play; pure in its domestic tragedy, and its influence on The Homecoming is clearly legible.

[Pádraig Mac Oscair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complaints that Irish society has gone to the dogs due to the influence of alcohol and drugs, alongside a more general social alienation common to much of the West, in recent years ignore the fact that antisocial behaviour and what's now called "toxic masculinity" have long been a feature of Irish life, particularly in the lower economic levels both rural and urban. Parish halls in Donegal had to be closed down in the 1980s as a result of mass brawls breaking out, to say nothing of tribal rivalries between different schools or housing estates turning into active conflict.

This story of a near-feral family of migrant labourers whose identity is constructed on the foundation of a patriarchal cult of violence and feuding which is unintelligible to outsiders could have been written in 1926 or 2026 - it's only a matter of weeks since a grandmother and grandchild were killed by a petrol bomb in a case of mistaken identity amidst a wider feud much like the one that consumes the Carney family here.

[Caoilte Ó · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slow-cooker of family tension, resentment, and not being able to move on for the past. I do think the character of Betty isn’t a well-fleshed character and just a woman to be mistreated to illustrate over and over that the Carney men are bollockses.

[Madeleine Rose Healey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harold Pinter who?

[Theo · Rating 3 out of 5]

just a normal family reunion, nothing to worry about