The Playboy of the Western World

In 1907, The Playboy of the Western World opened at the Abbey Theatre, sparking riots and altering theatrical history forever. What happened? Perhaps Synge’s story of Christopher Mahon, the lad who ‘slew his da,’ was too explicit in showing the sexual interest aroused in the Mayo women by the young Playboy. Or perhaps it was the wholly unacceptable spectacle of a man who had murdered his father being worshipped as a hero that angered the audience. Whatever the case, the sense of power and danger in this play, its unstable mixture of comedy and tragedy, of the lyrical and the grotesque, make it perhaps the greatest classic of the Irish National Theatre.