'The Playboy Of The Western World' at The Old Vic

Last week we went to see 'The Playboy of the Western World' at The Old Vic - I've been waiting for 30 years to see this play and it was well worth the wait. I did my dissertation at university 30 years ago on the works of JM Synge and the Celtic twilight (including Yeats and Lady Gregory) but I've never seen the play.  And, y'know what? I'm quite pleased I waited until this production to see Synge's masterpiece, for masterpiece it is.

I love the words, the lyrical quality of the phrasing and placing of the words, the poetry of everyday language in Synge's careful hands.  I'd downloaded the play onto my Kindle so I was reading the play both before and after seeing it and the language is great, both poetry and everyday speech at the same time that you don't notice when it's spoken in front of you. The poetry I've been used to when reading it is very different when it's part of fluent speech on the stage. And I was lucky enough to have three Irish people in the three lead roles of Christie (the Playboy, Robert Sheehan), Pegeen (the love interest, Ruth Negga) and the Widow Quinn (Niamh Cusack).

It's a very disfunctional play at one level, a play that glorifies a young lad that kills his father to the extent that the owner of a little pub on the coast of County Mayo is happy to leave him as protector of his daughter while he goes out to drink at a wake.And that's the premise throughout, that Christie has killed his father and is to be celebrated by the young women of the village and the old codgers wanting some refreshing gossip.  Of course, it's not as simple as that, and when Christie's supposedly dead dad turns up there are problems and Christie has to kill him again, this time in front of a baying crowd.  And that makes it different, now that they've witnessed a murder they need to make sure he's hanged... except there are more twists to the tale.

Niamh and Ruth are both consummate stage actresses that I've seen before (Ruth was Ophelia in 'Hamlet' last year) so it was Robert who was the unknown quantity.  He's the star of 'Misfits' on E4, one of my surprise likes of last year and, when I heard he was playing this role I thought, 'yes, Christie.' He has the right level of bullshit and arrogance, the can-do blarny, but lacks the acting credentials.  This is his first stage role and it's a pretty challenging one at that.  He needs to learn from his co-stars and then come back and do something really out of character to get us all gasping in surprise.  I think you can do it, so surprise us.

Put simply, I loved it.  The story-telling is excellent (well, it would be, wouldn't it) and the acting was engaging.  I loved the set, with the cottage pub that turned 360 degrees on the stage.  The playboy of the western world isn't who you think he is but he's someone to remember.  Go and see this production if you can, it's well worth it.