When premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin its anti-Catholic stance caused enormous controversy with its author denounced in pulpits up and down the country.
Defenders included the then President of Ireland who argued that the play was, along with The Playboy of the Western World and Juno and the Paycock, one of the greatest of Irish dramas.
When it was revived in a substantially rewritten version at the Abbey in 2001 and then at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester in 2003 it was re-evaluated as one of Murphy's best plays and was enormously successful with audiences.
As Harry shelters in the church it emerges he has not only been sacked from the circus but has walked out on his troupe of freelancers which includes Francisco, Olga, his wife and a dwarf called Samuel.
Also in common with Murphy's other plays it mixes realism with an elegiac lyricism, the stark reality of the characters' suffering and destitution contrasting with the poetic aspiration of their souls.