Theatre: New twist on Synge’s hardy annual
Sara Keating reviews The Playboy of the Western World and The Alternative
The Playboy of the Western World
By John Millington Synge
Gaiety Theatre, Dublin
Until October 5
Rating:***
There is a strong Northern accent to Oonagh Murphy’s uneven production of The Playboy of the Western World, a co-production between Belfast’s Lyric Theatre and Dublin Theatre Festival. With the help of set designer Molly O’Cathain, Murphy transports the action to the borderlands of north-western Ireland in the 1980s where the violence of the surrounding landscape ...