HONOR MOLLOY
Playwright | Novelist | Salonnière
"CRITICS PICK! ... Grotesque but richly satisfying... This is a piece of Irish gothic; other practitioners include Conor McPherson, a specialist in haunting conversations, and Martin McDonagh, the poet of dark comedy. Now Ms. Molloy enters the ring, exploring rage, dissolution, sexual perversity, and family history with a bleak and penetrating acuity... it is Ms. Molloy’s salty, slangy yet singsong dialogue that most resonates. Mr. McPherson and Mr. McDonagh might have to set another place at their table.”
-Andy Webster, The New York Times
Crackskull Row is gorgeous... The sheer density of Molloy's lyricism has the effect of delaying our understanding. How can we keep up with her giddy spate of malapropism, quotation, joke and curse? The literary dazzle keeps us distracted, so as each dirty bit of wickedness unfolds, our actual comprehension comes in staggered waves. Word by word, the text is beautifully constructed.
-Helen Shaw, TimeOut
“I have seen and heard many perform their written work over the last forty years, but it is easy to say that Honor Molloy, on the page or in person, is one of the very best I have ever experienced. She is, in fact, beyond recommendation. Her writing and performances should be mandatory events for all civilized people.”
-Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News
"Honor Molloy’s In Pigeon House is ultimately a tribute to the spirit of stage play through the generations... patience is rewarded here by Molloy's cunning and surreal sensibility—channeling a whole slew of Irish bards, from Samuel Beckett to Martin McDonagh and Enda Walsh.”
-Tony Alder, The Chicago Reader
"Fortunately, Honor Molloy can write… The women’s parts are richly characterised, the scenes are well constructed, and the dialogue artfully crafted to the level of poetry. A talented cast under Carradine’s direction adds further flesh. It’s a thoughtful production, with plenty of attention to detail."
-James Waites, The Sydney Morning Herald
"Honor Molloy, who wrote the libretto, touched on such topics as imperialism, the smugness of the ruling class, 19th-century women's emancipation and the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama Church Bombing in which four children were killed. Dance and verse come together in one searing moment in "Lifting as She Climb" that communicates the force of the church explosion and of the flight of one girl's body upward. And the simplicity and plain-spokenness of Ms. Molloy's dialogue make a touching portrait of a fierce yet timid Angelina Grimké.”
-Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times
“Maiden Voyages was well received… With Murphy’s finely tuned ear for naturalistic dialogue allied to Molloy’s poetic lyricism and concern for social justice, they’ve created a powerful, grittily humorous, and deeply moving account of the lives of six very different Dublin women, all in the throes of labour pains.”
-DL, The Irish Times
“Honor Molloy’s Madame Killer is a modern take on Victorian melodrama, namely the story of a 19th-century New York abortionist. Thankfully free of didacticism and preciousness, Madame Killer combines pugnacious dark humor with the playwright's trademark acrobatic language and the relentlessness of a boxing match (which the play in fact contains). Somewhere in between a penny dreadful, a noir, and tongue-in-cheek parody, Madame Killer is a propulsive force, cramming 21 manic scenes into fewer than 90 minutes.”
-Jason Grote, New York Press
“As magical as a fairy tale and just as grim, Honor Molloy’s Smarty Girl pierces the heart with its pure Irish song. In this autobiographical novel, the voice is all: Molloy’s Dublin vernacular is a verbal kaleidoscope of fractured words and malapropisms.”
-Clare Dunsford, Brown Alumni Magazine
"Smarty Girl: Dublin Savage is a lighthouse intelligence that doesn't miss a stitch... The richness of the telling and the lessons of it can be weighed in every line. Many Irish books will be released this year, but few will be this candid or this complete."
-Cahir O'Doherty, The Irish Voice
"Louisville's annual Humana Festival is famous as a showcase for new plays and playwrights. The 2002 festival included new works by such big guns as Anne Bogart, Tina Howe, Julia Jordan, Charles L. Mee, and Adam Rapp, while emerging playwrights were relegated to Humana's National One-Act Play Contest. Of these, Honor Molloy's moving meditation on 9/11, Monument is the most haunting."
-Jack Helbig, Booklist
“and in my heart is a lesbian love story set in the midst of the 1916 Easter Rising. Deftly written by Honor Molloy, who based it on the experience of her great aunt Florence, it’s a heartwarming tale of an upper class Irish Girl, falling in love with a female revolutionary.”
-Seraina Vogel, GCN
“Refreshingly, Eve of Consumption’s protest against the stereotyping of women is not strident, and it hits some bull’s eyes lampooning false tenets of womanhood. Susan Hefner and Kate Gyllenhaal sketch witty movement characters, and Honor Molloy delivers diatribes of her own words, with vocal modulation and physical animation that are downright operatic — the music Evan Gallagher and Ladonna Smith play live at the rear of the theatre is always sensitive to the movement. It’s hard to keep from swiveling around to watch them produce their delightfully unlikely sounds with electric violin, keyboard/synthesizer and voice — an entertaining package of winning performances by two deft musicians and three talented women.”
-Gus Solomons Jr., The Village Voice
