Contemporary Irish pubs, like contemporary Irish authors, long to seize the innate essence of the Emerald Isle without shoehorning James Joyce into every conversation. Raise forks to literary cognoscenti with today’s Groupon: for $10, you get $20 worth of Irish pub fare and drinks at The Playwright Irish Pub & Restaurant in Hamden.

The Playwright's menu of Irish and American fare takes center stage seven days a week, sharing the limelight with amicable service and a rotating lineup of live Irish crooners. Whisked from kitchens by a Samuel Beckett impersonator, an authentic slew of Irish specialties includes an aromatic corned-beef-brisket-and-cabbage platter ($16.95) alongside a Guinness stew teeming with tender lamb, root veggies, and a stout broth ($18.95). A spread of signature burgers sees sizzling 8-ounce patties flanked by piping panoplies of fresh ingredients between their buns ($11.95 each).

Fix forks into the golden-brown crown encasing each chicken potpie ($15.95) or take up a quill to pen loopy limericks about the antics of twin gaelic pork chops, intoxicated with an Irish-whiskey caramelized-shallot apple sauce ($20.95). An epic assemblage of imported draft beers line The Playwright’s spirit station, and live entertainment delights diners when white-knuckle sporting bouts aren’t illuminating the eatery from its arsenal of high-definition flat screens.