It doesn’t come around very often, but whenever it does I am always thrilled to see it. John Millington Synge’s 1907 Irish classic makes my list of the top five plays written in the 20th century, thanks in no small part to the glorious cadences and mellifluousness of the way its rural County Mayo characters speak. Let no one say that theatre cannot have real-world consequences: when it premiered at the Abbey in Dublin, Playboy sparked riots that spread to the streets, thanks to its portrayal of a little community that is less than full of good God-fearing Catholics.
Our heroine is publican’s daughter Pegeen Mike (Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan); by the jaunty red boots that she sports we can tell instantly that Pegeen is bored and up for mischief. There’s not much in the way of entertainment in this remote and weather-blasted place, so when an intriguing stranger, Christy Mahon (Éanna Hardwicke), comes into the bar claiming to have killed his violent father, interest levels soar. An unknown person with a story entering a close-knit local hostelry: we can trace a direct line from this play to Conor McPherson’s modern Irish classic The Weir (which coincidentally finished a glorious London run just last week).
Pegeen is not the only one attracted to Christy’s tales of derring-do and it is amusing to watch her and the older Widow Quin (Coughlan’s Derry Girls co-star Siobhán McSweeney) show a bit of leg in covert competition for his attention. Christy in turn blossoms under the light and heat of all this female attention – a group of local young women literally jump for joy when they meet him – and he swiftly becomes a celebrity. Yet as matters subsequently sour, Synge offers us the salutary reminder that “there’s a great gap between a gallant story and a dirty deed”. How uncannily this speaks to our social media age, where reputations are made and destroyed overnight.
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For all its ebullience, Abbey Theatre artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin allows her production too languorous a pace at times, as mysterious figures in elaborately unsettling straw headpieces parade in the background, suggesting the wilder realms of Irish folklore beyond the reaches of the Catholic church. Coughlan remains a spirited presence throughout, even if she makes Pegeen’s ways slightly too modern for the period. It is no wonder that this sparky young woman is unwilling to settle for the drippy Shawn Keogh (Marty Rea) as her life partner.
Just as with his fine work on television in the Timothy Spall/Anne Reid starring The Sixth Commandment, Hardwicke cleverly crafts a fundamentally unknowable character whose attractiveness comes with a repellent undertow as the drama twists and twists again. This treat of a play leaves its characters, not to mention its audience, asking themselves some long, hard questions.
To 28 February, National Theatre (020 3989 5455, nationaltheatre.org.uk)
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