The place is the thing for writer with a vision

A decade on from his first play, some of Tom Swift’s eclectic back catalogue has been collected for posterity, writes Alan O’Riordan

A SURVEY of Tom Swift’s Selected Plays, just published by Carysfort Press, reveals a remarkable breadth of style and subject matter. There’s The Nose, his recasting of Gogol’s absurdist story as a satire on Irish officialdom; Doctor Ledbetter’s Experiment, a gothic tale of a Victorian Christian scientist unhinged by Darwin’s theories; and Swampoodle, his recent excavation of the history of an old Irish slum in Washington DC. We can add to that uncollected works such as the madcap, retro-futurist Yokohama Delegation, or the contemplative, spare Across the Lough.

Perhaps you could put this down to Swift bringing the inquiring mind of a professional journalist to bear on his work as a playwright. Or maybe it has something to do with his peculiar modus operandi as one half of the site-specific theatre company, the Performance Corporation (the other half is Swift’s other half, his wife Jo Mangan). For most writers, a play begins life as a blank sheet of paper, or a blinking cursor; but for Swift, it’s different.