Reviews for The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays

The average rating for The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-07-27 00:00:00 Lillian Gracia Oh wonderful wordplay! Read these lively passages and understand why Synge's work is still in print and why he continues to be regarded as a great Irish playwright. He did not live long and he wrote too little, but he left behind these works. Synge was an educated man from a bourgeois home, but he traveled around rural Ireland and fell in love with the colorful language and characters he encountered. "In the Shadow of the Glen" and "Riders to the Sea" are one act plays. The first one is pretty funny, and concerns a tramp who turns up at a rural home as the man of the house is about to be buried - only it turns out he has not died yet, but is only faking it. The second piece is considerably darker, and focuses on a rural family whose sons keep drowning in various mishaps. The sea seems to stand in for the inescapable fate that awaits us all. The real masterpiece here is "The Playboy of the Western World", and this play deserves a 5 star rating. In this, the playwright returns to the theme of a tramp turning up in a remote area and getting mixed up with the locals. In this case it is Christy Mahon, a young and seemingly foolish fellow who is fleeing his home after killing his father. (SPOILER ALERT) Strangely enough, the locals respond to him with awe and protect him. Attractive young ladies and a wily widow come after him with romance in mind. Apparently, some audience members in 1907 were offended by this, and there was a fair amount of controversy. However, all is not as it seems, and his da eventually shows up with a big bandage on his head (Christy had succeeded only in knocking him unconscious, not killing him as he had assumed) looking to thrash his son and drag him home. The real star of the show is Synge's language, drawn from the slang of rural Ireland, which crackles with wit and poetic energy. I would like to see a good production of this someday.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-17 00:00:00 David Morris A rather strange play. Perhaps it needs to be read twice or three times!