The determinedly lowercase desperate optimists company is an Irish, currently London-based, group engaged in experimental theatre. In Play-boy, two actors - Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor - take as their starting point Synge's classic play, and use it as a launching pad to explore a number of ideas and historical events.
The man opens the proceedings by asking rhetorically what do we need to know, and answering that we need the facts, simple and unadorned.
Then he regresses to the notorious Playboy riots, to Chile a hundred years earlier under the Irish dictator O'Higgins, forward to Trotsky in Mexico, on to Elia Kazan, the communist-purge in Hollywood in the 1950s, Kazan's film Viva Zapata! and more.
The woman, who has been in the background thus far, takes over and further develops the facts about all these. Meanwhile, two TV monitors display talking heads, some familiar, who comment freely on Synge's play and related matters.
A final session ties together the previous characters and events in a fantasy conclusion far from frill-free facts. I could discern little here of serious analysis, and nothing of induced revelation. It was, for some 75 minutes, pleasant to be entertained by youthful enthusiasm and experiment, and the verdict might fairly be that of the bon viveur in the famous Thurber cartoon; a modest little wine, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
