Murphy's first successful play, A Whistle in the Dark, was performed at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London in 1961 and caused considerable controversy both there and in Dublin when it was later given its Irish premiere at the Abbey having initially been rejected by its artistic director.
Though Murphy was religious as a boy, his 1975 play The Sanctuary Lamp was produced in the Abbey Theatre and received a hostile reception due to its anti-Catholic nature, with theatregoers walking out and much negative criticism in the media.
"[4] Considered by many to be one of Ireland's greatest playwrights,[5] Tom Murphy was honoured by the Abbey Theatre in 2001 by a retrospective season of six of his plays.
His work is characterised by a constant experimentation in form and content from the apparently naturalistic A Whistle in the Dark to the surreal The Morning After Optimism and the spectacularly verbal The Gigli Concert.
Although steeped in the culture and mythology of Ireland, Murphy's work does not trade on familiar clichés of Irish identity, dealing instead with Dostoyevskian themes of violence, nihilism and despair while never losing sight of the presence of laughter, humour and the possibilities of love and transcendence.
His latest plays include The Wake (1997), The House (2000) and The Alice Trilogy, which premiered in 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre in London with Juliet Stevenson in the eponymous role.