When the stakes get ever higher

Livin Dred to stage Synge classic

For Aaron Monaghan Playboy of the Western World is amongst the finest plays the world of drama has to offer. The Cavan man is directing Livin Dred’s production of John Millington Synge’s classic which plays in the Ramor Theatre next week.

“I think it’s the greatest play,” Aaron begins and pauses to choose his words carefully, he doesn’t want what he has to say to come across as mere hyperbole, “certainly the greatest Irish play ever written, I would nearly venture it’s the greatest play ever written. I think it’s just perfect.”

In his youth Aaron regarded it dismissively as “diddly-aye” but later, having spent five years “on and off” as Christy with Druid he professes to have fallen in love with both the character and the drama.

“I really discovered how amazing a play it is. It is both a comedy and a tragedy, it’s a love story, it’s desperately funny and every time a character says a line the stakes go higher - it keeps on surprising you. Every time the door opens something more outrageous comes in or goes out.”

For the uninitiated - if there are any - Aaron succinctly lays out the drama’s set-up, which is all laid bare in the opening 15 minutes, so no spoiler alert is required: “A man walks into a bar, reveals he has killed his father and is immediately celebrated, and immediately told, you’re great and we’ll give you a job here, and everybody starts to fall in love with him very quickly.”

In the town’s response to Christy, Aaron believes that Synge is pointing out the contradictions inherent in humans, and in particular “what it is to be an Irish person”.

“Over the course of the play he [Synge] begins to question the nature of violence and the nature of hero worship. He’s not saying that violence is great, but he is saying that we as human beings, and as Irish people, have a complicated history with something like violence or hero worship.

“When you think about our history, we are taught from when we are school children of the glorious violent nature of our history - ‘We fought the English, we fought the Normans, we were fighting Celts’, and this is a good thing. And yet it’s terrible when that violence is inflicted on us: ‘The terrible Brits, they did all this’. He’s always pointing out these themes, violence, love and hero worship are very contradictory, and they change depending on who’s telling it, and these things pass.”

Aaron brings up the old adage that a week is a long time in politics, and marvels that all the action in Playboy - and the altering perceptions of Christy - occurs in a single day.

“The person who comes in, that is celebrated early on in the play - that doesn’t last very long and I think Synge is talking about the constantly changing nature of the Irish psyche. We can give out about our politicians and how useless they are, but vote the same people in again, or vote a new person in and they’re just as bad as the last person. He’s not blaming us as Irish people but he’s exploring all those themes through a lens of violence and love and poetry.

“When he’s poking fun - he’s poking fun at everybody.”

Asked about the era in which he’s set the action for this Livin Dred production, Aaron confesses it would be easier to say when it’s not set.

“It’s not set in 1906 when Playboy was written, and yet nor is it a modern interpretation.

“It’s in my mind set in a place and in an era that is very very impoverished - any era in Irish history, or any place in Ireland that was kind of starved and thirsty for violence and for drink.”

Aaron is particularly intrigued in the era between the 1950s-1980s when Ireland was “beginning to rebel against authority - both religious authority and political authority”. As such he can imagine some passages of the action occurring in 1983 and others in 1952. Those decades were marred by poverty.

“Before we got into rehearsals what was really singing out to me was the idea of what happens to really poor, deprived people in a place where they have no authority - where authority is very far away from them, and yet that is what they’re ruled by.

“So things like the Dublin riots became kind of a filter for me - that type of stuff started to make sense to me a little bit, not that I’m saying I was on the side of the rioters or anything like that. It’s a sense of disenfranchisement.”

Aaron’s conscious that with such a legendary piece of Irish writing, he and his cast and crew are “having to live with the ghosts of productions past” but is relishing taking on that challenge.

“My aim in this is to make it as operatic as possible, while also making it as real and believable as possible.

“What’s emerging from that is a very intense and gripping and gritty production, that is very funny as a result.”

In this production Aaron has recruited “two amazing, amazing young actors” in Naoise Dunbar and Éilish McLaughlin for the lead roles of Christy Mahon and Pegeen Mike. The support cast is packed with familiar faces like Amelia Crowley from Derry Girls as the Widow Quinn, Garrett Lombard - Scobie in Pure Mule - plays Old Mahon, John Olohan from Bodkin is Michael James and Gerrard Byrne from Fair City as Philly Cullen.

“I can’t believe the cast I get to work with,” he gushes.

In addition to Livin Dred’s reputation the fact it’s a much loved play, people know “they are in safe hands with a great comedy, and a great tragedy and a great love story”.

Playboy is running for three nights in the Ramor Arts centre, from Wednesday to Friday, January 29-31 and Backstage Theatre, Longford on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 11-12. At the time of going to press, tickets for Friday night in the Ramor had almost sold out, so you would be advised to get your tickets now if you want Synge’s insight for the 21st century.

“I think you could put it on at any stage between now and when it was written in 1906 and you could find something that talks about what it is to be Irish, or the state of the world, or the economy - I think it is that perfect and that huge of a play.”