Renowned Kilkenny playwright and writer, Thomas Kilroy, dies aged 89

The well-known Kilkenny playwright, writer and Aosdána member Thomas Kilroy has died. He was 89.

Mr Kilroy was the author of 16 stage plays and one novel. One of Ireland’s most renowned playwrights, his plays include The Death and Resurrection of Mr Roche, The O’Neill, Tea and Sex and Shakespeare, Talbot’s Box, Double Cross, The Madame MacAdam Travelling Theatre, The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde and The Shape of Metal.

The Arts Council has expressed its deep regret at his passing.

"The passing of Thomas Kilroy will be keenly felt by theatre and literature lovers worldwide," said Chair of the Arts Council Prof Kevin Rafter.

"He was one of the foremost theatre artists this country has ever produced.  He was known for his seering depictions of Irish society and for revealing uncomfortable truths through luminous, beautiful writing. His was a very large canvas which encompassed grand historical narrative from both Ireland and overseas.

"He brought a number of figures from history such as Matt Talbot, Constance Wilde and Lord Haw Haw vividly to life in his extraordinary plays.  During the Covid-19 crisis I was fortunate to see his adaptation of The Seagull (after Chekhov) presented by Druid in a striking outdoor production at Coole Park in County Galway in 2021."

Born in Kilkenny in 1934, Thomas Kilroy studied at University College Dublin and taught and lectured at several universities in Europe, Asia and the US. He was Professor Emeritus of Modern English at the University of Galway.  

He adapted Ibsen’s Ghosts and Chekhov’s The Seagull, the latter to a setting in the west of Ireland, and he wrote a version of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. The Big Chapel, a novel, won the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1971 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  

In the late 1980s, he was a director of the Field Day Theatre Company. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (and won its Heinemann Award in 1972), and a member of the Irish Academy of Letters. He won the Irish-American Foundation’s Literary Award in 1974.

He also wrote screenplays for television and film, and numerous works of criticism on Irish literature. At the Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards, 2004, he was presented with a Special Achievement Award for his contribution to theatre.  Asylum Productions presented an adaptation of his novel The Big Chapel in his home town of Callan in 2019 as part of Kilkenny Arts Festival and his adaptation of The Seagull (after Chekhov) was presented by Druid in an outdoor production at Coole Park in 2021.  His memoir Over the Backyard Wall was published by Lilliput Press in 2018.