The Informer, Tom Murphy's stage adaptation of Liam O'Flaherty's novel, was produced in the 1981 Dublin Theatre Festival and directed by the playwright himself, with Liam Neeson in the leading role. The play discloses the quest of a character for some source of meaning or identity at the point of emotional and moral breakdown. In the case of Gypo Nolan, the informer of the title, this involves a nightmarish progress through a Dublin underworld in which he changes from a Judas figure to a scapegoat surrogate for Jesus, taking upon himself the sins of the world.