Murphy's take on the Paris production of Andrew Lloyd Weber's Cats was published in The New Yorker.

"Greetings from Paris. I've been here a few days. At the moment I can hardly see anything because because the contacts I have are too old to wear and the pair that are being sent to me haven't arrived yet. But being half blind has its advantages.

For instance, a friend mine is doing "Cats" here and he got me and my girlfriend free tickets. Now "Cats" is a show made for the half blind. I was in the third row and the flashing lights look just great from there; the whole thing had a much more impressionistic look than, say, "Sunday in the Park with George" ever achieved for me. In fact, "Cats" is really fun to look at when you can't look at it.  I think the Really Useful Theatre Company should do something really useful and hand out hallucinogens with the program, so that everyone can enjoy "Cats" as much as I did.

The production has something else going for it: it was entirely in French, so I couldn't understand the lyrics. A cigarette  butt of a song like "Memory" gains elegance when it starts out "Minuit, la la la la la laaaa la...." Undoubtedly this is the production that T. S. Eliot's ghost has prayed for. It's a strange show. Every time you begin mindlessly enjoying it, something incredibly offensive finds its way in to view --- loosely speaking, of course, in my case.

But the French seem to like it.

I guess now that Batman is advertised on every bus stop and billboard in Paris, we have a Paris ready for "Cats." Lloyd Weber probably thinks this makes him a serious composer -- any maybe it does for the French; but, then, the French think that Jerry Lewis is a genius, too."

Murphy adapted Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale for a performance he staged at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall for The Juilliard School. For eight years he was playwright-in-residence in O'Neill's boyhood home, The Monte Cristo Cottage in New London, Connecticut. He is the author of The Eugene O'Neill Revue, a biographical concert about the women in O'Neill's life. The Revue has been performed at Lincoln Center and at Yale University, New York University and Columbia University. 

Jimmy Tomorrow, his solo show musical adaptation of the O'Neill short story, Tomorrow, debuted at The Players Club last October.

His biographical concert of Sean O'Casey, Sean, Women and Song was performed at Irish Repertory Theater in May. 

He is also the author of the plays Chip, Narrowback, The Cardboard Cantata and Don't Smoke in Bed, which have been performed in New York and the recently completed A Tenor of Convenience and Learning Lohengrin.

He edited of The O'Neill Studio Anthology, a collection of plays by Yale students and alumni.