Director of modern take on Synge’s Playboy hopes to draw younger audience

A RADICAL new version of a famous play is being staged at the Abbey Theatre — 100 years after it caused street riots.

JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, first performed in 1907, has been revamped by writer Roddy Doyle and African-born director Bisi Adigun, and opens on Wednesday.

In the new version for the 50th Dublin Theatre Festival, the Playboy Christy Mahon is Christopher Malomo, an asylum seeker from Nigeria who is on the run after supposedly killing his father.