The Playboy of the Western World

Bad plays are hissed; good plays are cheered. There are few occasions when a play is so controversial as to unleash violent passions and cause a serious riot at its premier. The Playboy of the Western World was just such a play.

One of the best-known Irish playwrights, John Millington Synge, premiered The Playboy of the Western World in 1907 at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. This morbid comedy deals with the moment of glory of a peasant boy who becomes a hero in a strange village when he boasts of having just killed his father—but who loses the villagers’ respect when his father turns up alive. The play’s unsentimental treatment of Irishmen provoked controversy, eventually resulting in the infamous “Playboy riots.”

The Playboy of the Western World has been recorded and adapted many times, but this timeless recording stars the Irish actors who made it a classic, including Siobhan McKenna and Cyril Cusack.