As a playwright Thomas Kilroy has been particularly concerned with the development of contemporary Irish theater. In his seminal 1959 essay "Groundwork for an Irish Theatre", published when he was in his mid twenties and beginning his academic career, Kilroy set the agenda for his own later writing. In the essay he connected the need for technical and formal innovation to the complexity of vision required for a playwright to understand, portray, and analyze the changing society of Ireland. "During the last twenty years," he complained, "few Irish dramatists have been in any way exciting technically. More often however our dramatists today are guilty of a worse defect than mere lack of technical proficiency. They are inclined to shirk the painful, sometimes tragic problems of a modern Ireland which is undergoing considerable social and ideological stress." Finding inspiration in the work of Irish playwright Brendan Behan and of English...