My Old Man by Tom McGrath
"In Tom McGrath's My Old Man, human connections flicker and sputter between life and death. A woman tries finally to connect with her long lost and now dying father and with someone else who may be a lover, saviour or nemesis. Her son's equally desperate efforts to spark a relationship with his grandfather, and at the same time revive him, terminate in a kind of snuff video phone clip. People appear and disappear: at least as much apparitions, ghosts and fragmented memories as they are flesh and blood. With his gift for focusing on elemental features of life and theatre, Tom McGrath exposes the fragile bones and nerves of human relationships and drama alike in this extraordinary, searing piece."
Bob Tait, theatre reviewer and writer on Scottish literature
ISBN: 0-9551246-1-1, 9780955124617
Price: £3.99
Laurel and Hardy by Tom McGrath
"What elevates McGrath's fluid dreamlike play from being just a chucklesome wallow in nostalgia is the sense that this powerhouse is about to crumble. Behind the laughter lies a tremendous sadness that speaks for the passing of this act and for all sublime art. This is why [Stan's] cry at Ollie's death is such a heartbreaker."
Mark Fisher, The Guardian
"It's the genius of Tom McGrath's beautiful 1976 play, Laurel & Hardy, that it grapples in the most profound way with this strange and almost mystical relationship between comedy and mortality."
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman
"McGrath's play is the most charming of theatre works."
Mark Brown, Sunday Herald
ISBN: 0-9551246-0-3, 9780955124600
Price: £3.99
Electra by Tom McGrath
"As a dramatist, Tom McGrath's great strength is to pare things down to the fewest possible words, the sparsest settings, only the most elemental action. His extraordinary stroke with Electra is to seize on the brevities of Greek tragedy and whittle them down even further. The result: a lethal little piece, bristling with menacing meanings and consequences, representing a total minefield. We watch in horror as the characters blunder through it. His Electra is self-righteously correct, mad and disastrous. His Orestes, rather than god-enlightened, is a hesitant teenager blinded by a vision of new beginnings. All the characters have a dubious mixture of self-deluding, self-interested and high-minded motives. All are fatally credulous, believing messengers and messages even less reliably credentialed than CNN, Fox or the BBC. This piece zings with more compressed meaning than many ten times its length. It resonates powerfully for all of us watching similar stories unfolding in the Middle East, Congo, Rwanda, the USA and Northern Ireland."
Bob Tait, theatre reviewer and literary critic
More information
The following booklet can be downloaded free of charge.
Oedipus The Visionary and The Tragedy of Electra Resource Booklet
ISBN: 0-9549625-2-4, 9780954962524
Price: £3.99