The Playboy of the Western World

The new version of Playboy by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle is very witty in its contemporary parallels. They managed to transition J.M. Synge's original from its rural West to urban Dublin while maintaining the familial tensions, xenophobia, and violence. Though this production avoided much of the grittiness that can be culled from the text (and that was present in the 2005 DruidSynge production), it seems the text itself maintains the possibility of such a reading.

This production seemed to celebrate the original while finding incisive parallels to the original circumstances in contemporary Dublin. The setting of the play was no longer an illicit bar but a legal bar with illicit crime. There was an amplification of the xenophobia by making Christy an asylum seeker from Nigeria who hopes to locate his distant relatives supposedly living in Dublin. There were a few memorable lines that were very close to the original text while there were also striking deviations, notably the line about 'shifts' and the final lamentation by Pegeen Mike.

While watching the production and laughing aloud, I wondered how this version would play to audiences outside of Dublin. Sure I don't understand all the local references, but I understood enough of them from having lived in Dublin to be aware these jokes will require some dramaturgical endeavours. Of course, this is also true of original plays such as those of Martin McDonagh in which images of contemporary Ireland confront the enduring images of old Ireland. The accounts of terrible productions of McDonagh's work in the US fueled my concern for this new adaptation and the untested ignorance of some theatre-makers.

My fears for its future aside, I delighted at the interesting choices made in the production. The social triumph of Christy through a street fight rather than through a horse race became more striking as the local girls use their mobile phones to show the recordings they had made. This was not only an interesting commentary on local entertainment but it allowed for a staging similar to the effect of everyone gathered around the window to watch the race go past.

There was some awkwardness in the production, but overall it was quite enjoyable and impressively solid for a world premiere.