Theatre: New twist on Synge’s hardy annual

Sara Keating reviews The Playboy of the Western World and The Alternative

Megan McDonnell, Hazel Clifford, Michael Shea, Aoibhéann McCann and Holly Hannaway in The Playboy of the Western World Pic: Mark Stedman

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 ...