by John M. Synge
Cast
Small farmers:
Village girls:
The action of the play takes place near a village on a wild coast of Mayo. The first part of the play passes on an evening in autumn, and the remainder on the following day.
Production by Hugh Hunt and Henry McMullan
(From Northern Ireland)
'The Playboy of the Western World' will be broadcast again tomorrow at
9.10 in the Regional programme
Not many plays since CEdipus Rex have had a parricide for the hero. And Christy Mahon took his crime more lightheartedly than tragic, unconscious CEdipus-reflecting at the end of Act I, ' Well, it's great luck and company I've won me in the end of time — two fine women fighting for the likes of me-till I'm thinking this night wasn't I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by.' But Christy was no ordinary murderer: ' I never used weapons. I've no licence, and I'm a law-fearing man..... I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull.' Very different from the way the Widow Quin committed her little murder: ' She hit himself with a worn pick, and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way he never overed it, and died after. That was a sneaky kind of murder did win small glory with the boys itself.'