'DruidMurphy' brings Irish playwright Tom Murphy to New York [View all]

Would love to be able to see this.

This just in: The Irish really know their way around telling a story.

Yet despite America's eagerness to embrace Irish culture for one Guinness-addled day every March, few are familiar with many of the island's titans of the written word beyond an ambitiously purchased copy of "Ulysses," a tear-stained "Angela's Ashes" or perhaps stumbling through the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" during the holidays.

Consider celebrated Irish playwright Tom Murphy, whose name falls below the radar in mainstream American pop culture. A curated trio of his plays at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York could help change all that.

Presented by the Galway-based Druid Theatre Company, the compactly named "DruidMurphy" earned raves from Charles Isherwood in the New York Times this week for staging a cycle that includes Murphy's debut play "Whistle in the Dark" (1961), "Famine" (1968) and "Conversations on a Homecoming" (1985).

Crossing an ocean and spanning over a century, DruidMurphy is the story of Irish emigration, of those who went and those who were left behind—a sweeping tale told through three great plays by Tom Murphy: Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark, and Famine.

Tom Murphy’s cutting, darkly comic playwriting has made him perhaps his country’s most respected living dramatist—“the nearest thing to a genius that Ireland can boast of,” says novelist Colm Tóibín—having profoundly influenced younger writers like Martin McDonagh, Enda Walsh, and Conor McPherson. This major project staged by one of Ireland’s most consistently daring theater companies is a rare look for New York audiences at Murphy’s work and at the Irish people.