© Slovensko ljudsko gledališče Celje, 2013
Synge's most famous play is set in a small community in County Mayo into which a stranger bursts, young Christy Mahon, claiming to have killed his father. Michael James Flaherty, the local publican, takes a shine to him, and his daughter Pegeen Mike finds his company preferable to that of her dull fiancée, Shawn Keogh. Much to her annoyance, all the available women in the area soon flock to the pub to behold the wonder of "the only playboy of the Western world". Under their admiring eyes, Christy's confidence grows and grows until it transpires that his father is not dead after all. When Old Mahon arrives with a gaping head wound, searching for his ungrateful son, the story takes an unexpected turn.
The premiere production on 26 January 1907 famously provoked riots at the Abbey Theatre, allegedly arising from the portrayal of Irish womanhood and the use of the word "shift" (Christy says of Pegeen that he would choose her even if he were "brought a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts . . ."). Yeats returned from Scotland to address the crowd on the second night, famously declaring: "You have disgraced yourself again, is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?"
Maunsel & Co. 1907
Translated into: Portuguese, Slovenian, Greek
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