The Plays of Maura Laverty

Published here for the first time, MauraLaverty’s plays Liffey Lane, Tolka Row and A Tree in the Crescent are rooted in 1950s Dublin, its territories and enclaves.Teeming with the lives of the poor, the ambitious, the trapped and thestruggling, the plays are moving, funny and vividly alive. They capture thecapital in a state of transformation – reaching for modernisation while stillenmired in stagnant class divisions, poor housing and narrow social values. Keyto all three plays are questions of home, the lives of women and girls, and theimpact of conservative government policies and church attitudes.

Already a public figure in Irish life, and aninfluencer before her time through her fiction, cookery books and broadcasting,Laverty’s plays met with huge success when staged in 1951 and 1952 by HiltonEdwards of the Gate Theatre Company at Dublin’s Gaiety and Gate Theatres and ontour. Laverty’s trilogy is a significant and long-awaited part of thetwentieth-century Irish theatrical canon.

This volume presents the Trilogy, including apreface by Christopher Fitz-Simon, who knew and worked with Laverty. Theeditors’ introduction contextualises Laverty’s work and considers thetheatrical values of the plays.