PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

 

30 June 2026

Susan and I have just seen the National Theatre production John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World. It’s an Irish classic but I’m trying to work out why. Because it was written in Hiberno-English (the Irsih version of English, influenced by Gaelic)? Because it focuses of the life (the often drunken life) of Irish peasants? Because it satirizes the idea of a hero – in this case, a young man who is celebrated for killing his father? The response to its first showing in Dublin in 1907 was riots by Irish nationalists and republicans who saw it as an insult to Ireland.

The Guardian reviewer of the National Theatre version summarised it as “the hollow elevation of a pretender by a (desperate?) community in dire need of a hero” and says that this could still be true in our populist times. But somehow, this production doesn’t quite know the value of the story it’s telling. Each of the main actors, including Nicola Couglan and Sionhan McSweeney (both from Derry Girls), perform beautifully. There’s some of the best “drunk” acting I’ve seen from Lorcan Cranitch and Eanna Hardwicke as the simple but murderous Christy Mahon has the angular physicality of a young Matt Smith. In a review on RTE, the Irish national radio station, the reviewer proposed that Hardiwcke might be playing Christy as neurodivergent and that starts to make sense of his character that goes from shivering child to hero, from poet to murderer again, and then, when finally, rejected by his loved one and her community, he finds the strength to leave.

The production itself weaves between comedy and tragedy, love and fear, folklore and religion and I confess, although fascinating to watch, it didn’t land emotionally or even politically for me. Although the deconstructed fiddle music contributed to the atmospherics,  I kept being distracted by costume choices that didn’t make sense. Having said, I loved that I was forced to listen hard to understand the language and the poetry.

I’m sure I saw of production of Playboy of the Western World in Perth in the 1970s or 80s but the only one I can track down was in the Old Dolphin Theatre in 1974. Could that be right? I have trouble imaging even a good amateur cast dealing with the Irishness of it all.