Synge worried about "morbidity of mind" among a people who have lost the gift of laughter. In Geoff Gould's production for the Everyman Palace of The Playboy no notion of morbidity could survive. This is a presentation which combines energy with daring by reinvigorating a folk comedy so that it glitters with panache. It assumes that laughter is more life-blood than gift, less invited than taken, helplessly, for granted.
The approach will not be without its critics. Some of the effects are derivative - although this must be justified by a director's intelligent plagiarism. Some viewers may be disturbed as much as diverted at the use of chorus, almost to a pantomimic degree, for such a celebrated play: the story of an isolated community making its own importance and adopting for the sake of diversion a stranger claiming to have murdered his father. And there is always the question of just how Pegeen Mike will deliver that closing line. It is enough to say here that The Cranberries come to her aid. But saying this is also to say that this Playboy seethes with youthful vitality - an ingredient which smoothes off which might otherwise be a few sharp corners. As director, Geoff Gould has pushed the curragh out: in less careful hands this could have been a romp, but this production is built, not invented. Pat Murray's set of swooping sail-like panels and an exaggerated rake is used smoothly by a confident cast. David O'Brien's lighting unfolds patterns like a transparent curtain. The casting is a credit to Gould: the older characters are given with weight, the difficult phrasing managed to perfection. Antoinette Hilliard's Widow Quinn has something of the grand pathos of Cleopatra, while no opportunity to see Oonagh Montague (here as Sarah Tansey) should be missed. And Michael O'Sullivan's Christy needs only a better sense of vocal timing to be the perfect foil for the quicksilver Pegeen of Caroline Lynch, an actress in total command of the changes from termagant to dove and capable of hushing all the stage and all the auditorium without speaking at all.
Until July 24th, at the Town Hall Skibbereen from July 26th to 28th, and the Youth Centre, Fermoy, on July 30th and 31st.
