In the preface to The Playboy of the Western World, JM Synge makes a claim for the authenticity of his portrayal of the Irish peasantry: "I have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland."
Complemented by the naturalistic staging techniques of the early Abbey, Synge's play soon set the standard by which the Irish dramatic canon would come to be governed - and ultimately limited - by: that Irish drama should reflect the true nature of Irish life.
The prospect of Pan Pan Theatre's production of The Playboy of the Western World translated for the Eastern world thus excites a wealth of theatrical possibility for a play that has often been stunted by its status as the foundation text of 20th-century Irish drama.
Pan Pan's production premiered in Beijing in March of this year, and is a Chinese adaptation of Synge's play with an all-Chinese cast. Synge's remote sheeben is transformed into a "whoredressers" - a massage parlour masquerading as hairdressers - on the back streets of Beijing, with La La (Pegeen Mike) as its mistress.
Aideen Cosgrove's slick contemporary design, the strategic positioning of TV screens for a reality-TV effect, and the mini-skirted flirtations of the ladies in their short shift-dresses provide the visual aspects of the play's transformation. Director Gavin Quinn allows traditional Chinese performance techniques to suffuse the production too, such as direct address to the audience and the stylised physical movements of Shan Shan, Sha Sha and Na Na (Synge's village girls). The contemporary Mandarin idiom, meanwhile, condenses the three-act play into a swift 80-minute romp.
By re-locating the Chinese production within its original cultural context, however, Pan Pan's Playboy encounters a serious problem, and one which, strangely, has nothing to do with the production itself. The surtitles that accompany the production provide an (almost) verbatim reproduction of Synge's play; an aid for the understanding of the Dublin audience, and, perhaps, a claim to the authenticity of Pan Pan's version of the play.
However, instead of illuminating the action unfolding on stage, the surtitles shift the focus from the contemporary production to the original text. The effect that this creates perhaps highlights the constructed-ness of language within the play (it is language after all that enables Christy's transformation) but, more obviously - and to the production's detriment - it creates a space for an Irish audience to satisfy their own fixed ideas about The Playboy of the Western World.
In light of the cultural familiarity with and reverence for the original text in Ireland, Pan Pan's production treads a fine line between being received as an exotic absurdity and being given credit for what is an important reinterpretation of the play. It will be a pity if Pan Pan's production is celebrated for the wrong reasons, because their contemporary adaptation of the text has the potential to instigate a revolution in the way in which the Irish repertoire is performed, both internationally and in the context of multicultural Ireland. - Sara Keating
Until Sat
Sleeping Beauty - Everyman Palace Theatre, Cork
€8 for a lump of flashing neon. €2.50 for a mouthful of ice cream and €5 for a programme crammed full of advertising. Yes mammies and daddies, boys and girls, it's panto time again.
The Everyman Palace's Sleeping Beauty, presented by the Cork Academy of Dramatic Arts (CADA), takes its cue more from Walt Disney's 1959 re-telling than Charles Perrault's original (which first appeared in 1697), neatly, and perhaps wisely, sidestepping the Brothers Grimm treatment along the way. The Disney animation, which cost $6 million to make, took only half that at the box office and nearly bankrupted the Disney studio. It's now looked on as the Citizen Kane of animation films.
Set in the land of Corkonia, CADA's tale opens at the court of King Fussalot (Shane Casey) and Queen Relaxibit (Finnoula Linehan), who are preparing to celebrate the christening of their daughter, Princess Dawn (Karen Atkins).
Inexplicably, the court's head butler, Phancy Pants (Neil Prendeville) omits to invite Biddybadbum (Frank Twomey), a tricky customer at the best of times, to the celebration.
As a result, Biddybadbum turns up at the knees-up and puts a spell on the young princess - nowadays, presumably, he'd save himself the hassle and get Max Clifford to spin the snub. The curse kicks in should the princess ever hurt herself on a spinning wheel, and low and behold, in a plot twist straight out of leftfield, on her 18th birthday the one thing the princess desires more than anything else in the whole, wide, world, is . . . a spinning wheel.
The first half trundles along. Jim Mulcahy as Nurse Gumdrops ("He's very Corkish," noted my seven-year old) and the excellent Frank Twomey as Biddybadbum, help keep us interested, despite some prosaic and dull choreography, especially during the nursery scenes.
Both Shane Morgan as Prince Renaldo and Karen Atkins as Princess Dawn had pitching issues during their respective solos, which two performances a day should help resolve. Covers such as Ring of Fire, Let 'Us' Entertain You and House of Fun go down well, thanks to a tight band led by Dave Murphy and featuring some notable Cork session musicians.
After the interval, things run more smoothly, helped by good design (including superb lighting by Paul Denby), alarming sound effects and a busier storyline.Wisecracks about penalty points, the health crisis, and payments to politicians keep the oldies happy, while the introduction of a time machine facilitates some upbeat retro numbers, courtesy of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The storyline plays itself out, and before we know it we are being invited to a wedding scene, which has more in keeping with the Munich Beerfest than a magical fairytale.
With reference to champagne, and lyrics such as, "let's raise our glasses high, and gurgle and slurp till they're dry", the creative team's choice of song is wholly ill-advised and irresponsible, given our underage drinking culture, and needs to be rethought. That aside, the production ticks most of the right boxes and should benefit from an extended run. - Brian O'Connell
Runs until Jan 14
