Friday was
supposed to have been a “free day” for everyone, but because of some scheduling
complications it became yet another day involving . . . yet another highlight.
This one was
the opportunity to see a dress rehearsal of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World—for my
money (for whatever that may be worth) the greatest (whatever that may mean)
play ever written. Directed by
Patrick Sutton, this production will be launched next week by the Smock Alley
Players, a troupe based at a wonderfully renovated space on the site of the
Royal Theatre . . . which dates to 1662.
Patrick generously invited us to attend a non-stop dress rehearsal of
the entire play, but we arrived in time to catch first a directed rehearsal of
the final scene of the play.
Coincidentally, we had focused on that scene in our class discussion of
the play before we headed to Dublin, and we had watched just that segment in
the Druid Theatre (Galway) DVD version: seeing a seasoned director like Patrick
putting his actors through their paces with stops and starts and do-overs of
lines and blocking and movement was a real eye-opener for some of us. Clearly, the Smock Alley version is shaping up to be a really fine production.
Also coincidentally, our attending this production of Playboy followed on the heels of our
returning the previous evening from the Aran Islands, where Synge got his initial
inspiration for the play. William
Butler Yeats describes how Synge “had come / Towards nightfall upon certain set
apart / In a most desolate stony place, / Towards nightfall upon a race /
Passionate and simple like his heart.”
In his book The Aran Islands,
Synge recalls how an anecdote from the oldest man on Inis Meain (the middle island) sowed the seed
of what became Playboy: “He often
tells me about a Connaught man who killed his father with the blow of a spade
when he was in passion, and then fled to this island and threw himself on the
mercy of some of the natives with whom he was said to be related.”
When Playboy was first produced
at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907 it generated protests both inside and
outside the theatre for its depiction of Irish people in a sometimes
unflattering—albeit mostly humorous—light. The review in The
Freeman’s Journal typified the temper of the time and the place: “A strong
protest must . . . be entered against this unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish
men and, worse still, upon Irish girlhood. The blood boils with indignation as one recalls the
incidents, expressions, ideas of this squalid, offensive production,
incongruously styled a comedy in three acts.” Hard to imagine such a response in this day and age! However, in watching the Smock Alley
Players bring the play from the page to the stage, I think that we all came
away from the experience with a deepened appreciation for Synge’s accounting of
the play in the midst of the controversy in 1907: “There are, it may be hinted,
several sides to The Playboy.”
And as a coda, I must note that there are “several sides” to the Smock
Alley Theatre as well. Extending
his generosity even further, after the rehearsal Patrick Sutton gave us a tour of
the entire Smock Alley facility—which includes a black box theatre and a
banquet hall. He also gave us a
historical overview of the site and shared insights into his current directing
of The Playboy of the Western World. Our “free day” turned out to be just as
rich as our fullest of days.
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