Review of Stewart Parker: A Life by Marilynne Richtarik
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Date
2015-10Author
Lonergan, Patrick
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Patrick Lonergan. (2015). [Review of Stewart Parker: A Life]. The Modern Language Review, 110(4), 1125–1126. http://doi.org/10.5699/modelangrevi.110.4.1125
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Abstract
Stewart Parker is ofen spoken of as Ireland’s most unjustly neglected dramatist.
His first play, Spokesong, was an unexpected hit at the Dublin Teatre Festival in
1975; his last play, Pentecost (1987), is one of the great works about the Troubles
in Northern Ireland. And in the years between those two productions he wrote
several other dramas—all on (ostensibly) different themes, but all unified by a spirit
of playful experimentation. Parker’s death from cancer in 1988—at the age of only
forty-seven—robbed the Irish theatre of a figure who had already shown greatness,
and who obviously had much more to accomplish.