This is London Magazine New Year Edition 2026 - Flipbook - Page 26
Photos: Marc Brenner
26
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN
WORLD
National Theatre
Is it wrong of outsiders to think of
Ireland – that very pretty ‘emerald isle’
where the rain tips down on the
countryside more often than the sun
peeks out from behind the clouds – as a
place where rural folk wear brown
tweeds and the climate provides reason
enough to have another drink? Certainly
the west of Ireland was long been
thought of in that country as somehow
far away, beyond the reach of English
colonisation.
Yet this production of J. M. Synge’s
classic, ‘Playboy of the Western World’
is so much fresher and more brightly
coloured than that. Even the stage
curtain is transformed into a dream of
red velvet – a woman’s skirt above bare,
dancing feet and each fold of fabric
suggestive of a rose. Lovely to look at,
the set and costume designs by Dublinbased Katie Davenport are truly equal to
the dramatic talent in this show. We see
local girls in covetable handknits, some
in Arran patterns, some with ombré
shading in green or blue as if the wearer
had risen up out of woodland moss. The
broad Lyttelton stage evokes an old-
fashioned country pub, complete with
scrubbed wooden tables and rush seated
chairs, only larger. A cubby hole given
to the main character as a bedroom is
elevated 20 feet up a wall so that he has
to climb a ladder of bleached oaken
rungs.
It is gorgeous. Synge’s play, however,
is a comedy, so things go wrong fast.
First produced at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre
in 1907, this tale of a village half-wit,
who turns up at the public house in a
rainstorm, babbling about having split
his own father’s skull with a shovel,
caused rioting on the streets.
Nationalism was at fever pitch. A
sober, responsible and hard-working
nation was the image required, many
thought, to shake off the shackles of
English colonialism. A play satirising the
general public as both drunken and
violent was far from acceptable.
Luckily the politics are now history –
because the play remains very funny.
Strangely tall, lanky and moon-faced,
Eanna Hardwicke is Christy Mahon, the
self-styled father-killer. His apparent
guilelessness and sheer novelty quickly
cause the local girls to elevate this
stranger to heroic heights. An older
woman, Widow Quin (played by Siobhan
McSweeney with a knowing sensuality
and perfect comic timing) also takes an
interest in Christy, setting up an
immediate sexual rivalry with the
publican’s daughter, buxom Pegeen
(Nicola Coughlan.)
What they all see in him is anyone’s
guess. He wins a horse race, true. But
his main attraction seems to be that he
is a murderer. He only falls from grace
when his furious father turns up with a
gash to the head.
Catriona Mclaughlin’s direction
balances the hilarity with a sensitivity for
the spiritual roots of this remote
community. At the back of the stage,
where there is sometimes real rain, there
is also a pageant of people dressed in
costumes made from straw. This is a
moving chorus of keening figures – their
sound both tragic and elegiac. Whilst
the comedy is literally foregrounded, the
tragedy of a society where violence and
death are never far away is made plain.
This is quite an insight into Ireland’s
past, and well worth the strain of tuning
into the authentic accents to hear this
tale rich in local colour and sentiment.
Sue Webster
T H I S I S L O N D O N M A G A Z I N E • T H I S I S L O N D O N O N L I N E • w w w. t i l . c o m • @ t h i s i s l o n d o n m a g
