'The
myth of Matt Talbot, the saintly Dublin former alcoholic, is wonderfully
explored by Thomas Kilroy in Talbot's Box.'
— Nuala O'Faolain, The Irish Times
Matt
Talbot, the 'workers' saint' (1856-1925), provokes Thomas Kilroy's
ingenious examination of the idea of sanctity in the modern world.
The very incorporation of penance and spiritual search, his conversion
from alcoholism to prayer, fasting and self-mortification is sketched
in the textured resonances of the idiom of the Dublin streets
and in the soaring lyrical versions of his final visions.
Talbot's Box achieves, as the author notes in his preface, 'a play
about aloneness, its cost to the person, and the kind of courage
required to sustain it'.
