Synge’s play was first staged in an Ireland under British rule. Oonagh Murphy’s intriguing new production reminds us of that fact, by moving the action into Ulster.

YOU’RE not supposed to like The Sound of Music.

THE Playboy has moved with the times: a Mayo home called John Millington Synge House, built directly opposite the shebeen site where the Playboy of the Western World was set, has creature comforts such as a sauna and a Jacuzzi hot tub, along with a staircase which wouldn’t look too out of place in a production of Gone with the Wind.

THE ‘Playboy riots’ in the Abbey Theatre 100 years ago bring to mind how Barry Fitzgerald, later one of the most famous of all Irish actors, engaged in fisticuffs with a member of the audience, all because of the use of the word ‘shifts’.