McPHERSON, Conor 1971-

PERSONAL:

Born 1971, in Dublin, Ireland. Education: University College, Dublin, master's degree.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Dublin, Ireland. Agent—Curtis Brown, Ltd., 162-168 Regent Street, London W1R 5TB, England.

CAREER:

Author, dramatist, actor, and director. Fly by Night Theatre Company, Dublin, Ireland, cofounder; Bush Theatre, London, England, writer-in-residence, 1996—. Also acted in several of his own plays, including Inventing Fortune's Wheel and Radio Play; directed several of his own plays, Eden by Eugene O'Brien, and the film version of the Samuel Beckett play Endgame, 2000.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Stewart Parker Trust Award, 1995, for The Good Thief; Thames TV Award and Guinness/National Theatre Ingenuity Award, both 1996, both for This Lime Tree Bower; Olivier Award for best new play, for The Weir.

WRITINGS:

PLAYS

This Lime Tree Bower: Three Plays (includes Rum and Vodka, The Good Thief, and This Lime Tree Bower, produced in New York, 1999), New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1996.

St. Nicholas [and] The Weir, New Island Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1997.

The Weir (produced in London, 1998; produced on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theater, 1999), Nick Hern Books (London, England), 1998, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 1999.

A Dublin Carol: A Play (produced in London and Dublin; produced in New York at the Atlantic Theater, 2003), Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 2000.

Port Authority (produced in London at the New Ambassadors Theatre, 2001), Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 2002.

Shining City (one act), produced in London, 2004.

Also author of A Light in the Window of Industry, Come On Over, Inventing Fortune's Wheel, Radio Play, and The Stars Lose Their Glory.

SCREENPLAYS

I Went Down, Irish Film Board/BBC Films, 1997, published as I Went Down: The Shooting Script, notes by Paddy Breathnach, Conor McPherson, and Robert Walpole, Nick Hern Books (London, England), 1997.

(And director) Saltwater, Irish Film Board/BBC Films, 2000, published as Saltwater: Screenplay and Postproduction Notes, Nick Hern Books (London, England), 2001.

(And director) The Actors, Miramax, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Conor McPherson started writing plays when he was a student at the University of Dublin and first garnered attention for his mastery of the monologue. McPherson has called his use of monologues "refreshingly theatrical," as noted by Laura Hitchcock in Back Stage West. McPherson showed his talent at a young age in his early Dublin-produced plays, such as The Good Thief and Rum and Vodka. In This Lime Tree Bower, however, McPherson gained widespread notice for a story about a bookmaker getting robbed. Told through interwoven monologues by three men, the play reveals the one night in which their lives intersected. Charles McNulty, writing in Variety, liked McPherson's use of monologues but noted that "not everyone will be as taken with the play's monologue form." McNulty went on to comment, "While the occasional lapse into sophomoric humor marks this as an early work in McPherson's career, the piece has an undeniable power and intelligence, particularly in the compassionate way it portrays the characters' [snow-balling] moral compromises." Commenting on the play, a Contemporary Dramatists contributor noted that "what grips audiences are McPherson's narrative gift, strong sense of place, and understanding of betrayal."

According to Laura Hitchcock, writing in Back Stage West, McPherson has also become known for the supernatural elements of his plays. She noted, "No writer expresses the existential and supernatural combined as brilliantly as the precocious McPherson." In his play St. Nicholas, for example, McPherson tells the story of a Dublin drama critic who becomes obsessed with an actress and pursues her to London. After meeting a devil-like vampire, the critic begins to procure young victims for a house of vampires. A Contemporary Dramatists contributor found the first half of the play "a rivetingly funny account of Dublin theatrical politics and of the self-loathing of a seedy hack." However, the essayist went on to note that the vampire relationship "is clearly intended as a metaphor for the critic's kinship with parasitic bloodsuckers and as a symbol of his attempt to revivify himself through the elixir of youth. But the move from stark reality to inner fantasy feels awkwardly contrived." Celia Wren, writing in Commonweal, noted, "Lovers of form will scorn the work for its dreamlike shapelessness. But lopsided stories can have more charm—and even, in a way, more solidity—than narratives with Tiffany contours. Perfect shape smacks of insincerity, while a straggling plot invites belief, since it can have no other justification but truth." According to American Theatre contributor Pamela Renner, Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times that even though "scenes are not acted out in a conventional fashion, St. Nicholas is as vividly realized a theatrical experience as anything now available in New York. Mr. McPherson expands the scope of the stage to almost novelistic dimensions."

One of McPherson's most successful plays, The Weir, also incorporates the supernatural. The play revolves around stories told by five patrons of an Irish pub. Four of the patrons are men, who are trying to charm a female visitor from Dublin by telling a series of scary stories, complete with ghosts, ghouls, and faeries. Produced in London and on Broadway, The Weir culminates with the woman telling an eerie story of her own that outdoes all the rest. But the play has a dark side beyond the horror stories, as the listeners learn about the woman's relocation to Dublin to try and get over her guilt about her daughter's death. "In between the banter and blarney about playing the horses and stories of local characters, there is loneliness, emptiness and even fear," wrote Richard Scholem in the Long Island Business News. "The Weir turns dark and touching when these people reach out to each other." New Republic contributor Robert Brustein disliked the play's over-reliance on narrative, which Brustein thought deprived it of "dramatic action." He also noted that the play "struck me as a rather tiresome and retrograde exercise in Irish picturesque." But Irene Backalenick, writing in Back Stage, called the play "story-spinning in the grand Irish tradition" and noted, "Nothing much happens in The Weir,—no forward motion, no plot resolution. Yet everything happens, as playwright Conor McPherson reveals his five characters, each of whom is delineated by his relations with the others and by his memories of the past."

In his 2001 play, Port Authority, McPherson continues with his use of monologues as three speakers reveal their different lives. Variety contributor Matt Wolf commented that the play "will once again [raise the] question—as they often have with this dramatist's work—whether an evening of monologues constitutes a play." Nevertheless, Wolf went on to note, "But Port Authority leaves little doubt that … McPherson could well be the English-speaking theater's leading chronicler of romantic loss. When his characters' cumulative regret hits you, well, it just does." A Dublin Carol is McPherson's play about a life ruined by alcohol and vividly revealed in a series of monologues by the character of John Plunkett. Charles Isherwood, writing a review of the play's 2003 New York production in Variety, said, "It is, in its quiet way, a stunning piece of work, and an unexpected highlight of the theater season."

McPherson is also the author of several screenplays, including I Went Down, a 1997 film about a pair of Irish ex-cons, and Saltwater, a 2000 film that McPherson also directed. In his 2003 film, The Actors, McPherson tells the story of a semi-washed-up actor who looks for a break by taking on a role in real life that is fraught with danger. Despite his foray into films, McPherson remains primarily known for his stage plays, including his 2004 play, Shining City, which focuses on several characters in a therapist's office. Lying on a therapist's couch, the play's protagonist, John, tells Ian about his life as he tries to cope with his wife's death in a car crash. John believes he has seen his wife's ghost and that he is partially responsible for her death because of his philandering. His tale to Ian reveals "a profoundly moving portrait of a troubled marriage that has resulted in a loss for which he, as an adulterous husband, must share in the blame," noted Matt Wolf in Variety. Ben Brantley, writing in the NewYork Times, commented that the play could have simply been "a new framework for his hitherto favorite form, the monologue." But he concluded, "Yet it soon becomes clear that this play is shaped by how his characters try, unavailingly, to connect."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Dramatists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

American Theatre, July-August, 1998, Pamela Renner, "Haunts of the Very Irish," p. 20.

Back Stage, April 9, 1999, Irene Backalenick, review of The Weir, p. 42; May 21, 1999, Victor Gluck, review of This Lime Tree Bower, p. 51; November 3, 2000, Damine Jaques, review of The Weir, p. 19.

Back Stage West, January 25, 2001, Laura Hitchcock, "Pub Pop," p. 16; February 15, 2001, Laura Weinert, review of The Weir, p. 12; August 29, 2002, Dany Margolies, review of The Weir, p. 13.

Commonweal, May 8, 1998, Celia Wren, review of St. Nicholas, p. 15.

Daily Variety, February 21, 2003, Charles Isherwood, review of A Dublin Carol, p. 6; June 4, 2003, Derek Elley, review of The Actors, p. 10; July 9, 2004, Matt Wolf, review of Shining City, p. 4.

Entertainment Weekly, April 9, 1999, Jess Cagle and Matt Wolf, review of The Weir, p. 66; September 13, 2002, review of Beckett on Film, p. 133.

Guardian (Manchester, England), July 14, 2004, Dominic Dromgoole, "Talking Heads: Conor McPherson's Characters Could Have Walked Straight out of Lucian Freud's Paintings," p. 11.

Long Island Business News, February 12, 1999, Richard Scholem, review of The Weir, section A, p. 25.

New Leader, April 19, 1999, Stefan Kanfer, review of The Weir, p. 21.

New Republic, June 7, 1999, review of The Weir, p. 34.

New York Times, July 13, 2004, Ben Brantley, review of Shining City, section E, p. 1.

Variety, October 13, 1997, Derek Elley, review of I Went Down, p. 98; July 20, 1998, Karen Fricker, review of The Weir, p. 49; May 24, 1999, Charles McNulty, review of This Lime Tree Bower, p. 78; March 6, 2000, David Stratton, review of Saltwater, p. 40; October 9, 2000, David Rooney, review of Endgame, p. 30; March 19, 2001, Matt Wolf, review of Port Authority, p. 41; April 16, 2001, Pamela Renner, review of The Good Thief, p. 38; February 24, 2003, Charles Isherwood, review of A Dublin Carol, p. 59; May 19, 2003, Derek Elley, review of The Actors, p. 28; July 12, 2004, Matt Wolf, review of Shining City, p. 33.

World of Hibernia, summer, 1999, "The Weir Breaks on Broadway," p. 13.*