“The Playboy of the Western World” staged at UW-Stevens Point
A famous Irish play that is both farcical and tragic, “The Playboy of the Western World,” will be performed by the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Theatre & Dance Department.
Shows will be performed in the Studio Theatre at the Noel Fine Arts Center, 1800 Portage St., at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 14-15, and Wednesday through Saturday, Oct. 19-22. A 2 p.m. matinee will be held Sunday, Oct. 16. Admission is $17 for adults, $16 for senior citizens and $12 for students. Tickets are available at the Information and Tickets Office in the Dreyfus University Center, online or by calling 715-346-4100 or 800-838-3378. It is appropriate for a general audience.
According to its director, Assistant Professor Jeffrey Stephens, “The Playboy of the Western World” is set in a small isolated village on the west coast of Ireland where a young man enters a pub and soon tells everyone he’s killed his father. How the townspeople react is a surprise, he added.
“A dark, dark comedy, it’s a deeply poetic play with a lot of lush, colloquial expressions influenced by the Irish flair for storytelling,” said Stephens. The actors will speak in an Irish dialect that will be understandable by the audience, he said, adding, “The audience will love it and it’s also an educational experience for the student actors and designers. The challenges posed by designing the setting of this play go beyond what is usual for a contemporary play.”
Set in the smaller, more intimate Studio Theatre, the production brings the audience into a realistic setting of a dirt-floored rural pub of early 20th century Ireland. The props and costumes also present a rustic environment where farmers live hand to mouth, with very little excitement in their lives, said Stephens. Instead, they find excitement in the story told by the “playboy” of the title, Christy Mahon, played by senior Jake Horstmeier of Random Lake.
“The word ‘playboy’ in an Irish context means ‘jokester,’ or someone who tells tall tales,” he said. “But Christy has no idea what he’s doing at first. It’s the people of the village who help create the myth that people come from miles around to hear.”
The show’s Irish playwright, John Millington Synge, was influenced by the Irish Literary Revival, especially by the work of the poet Yeats, said Stephens, adding that the play was unique for its time in that it is realistic yet uses fanciful and poetic language to convey its exploration of the human condition.
“The Playboy of the Western World” also has a unique history, having caused a riot when it first debuted at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907 as its storyline insulted many Irish nationalists. This month, the play is also being produced at the famous, nearly 200-year-old Old Vic Theatre in London.
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