Skilfully choreographed and creatively staged, Niall Henry's contemporary take on the Playboy lures J.M. Synge's characters into a dance at once dazzlingly physical and disturbing in its psychological finds.
From the marvellously tense opening scene, the players are drawn expertly into the contours of the drama; as Olwen FouΘrΘ's closely guarded Pegeen Mike squares up to the cold-shouldered detachment of the men in her life, barely a muscle twitches onstage. The volcanic entrance of Mikel Murfi, the Playboy, signals a counter to their stiffened suspicion - and comic relief in spades.
Despite his carnival athleticism and perfect gormlessness, Murfi's Christy Mahon is no clown, convincingly handling the transition from stilted affectation to seamless eloquence.
The casting is wise; FouΘrΘ is a hypnotic Pegeen, and Cathy Belton a devilishly sexy Widow Quin. The strength of the production, however, is its inspired re-interpretation of the male characters
The temptation to play the fathers, Michael James (Brendan Ellis) and Old Mahon (a brilliant Joseph M. Kelly), as staggering, hilarious old fools is deftly resisted. Wary of movement, sharp-suited as gangsters - in contrast to Mahon's colourful abandon - these men step out a provincial waltz of tension and menace which reminds us that Synge wrote this play with the impact of Darwin's survival-of-the- fittest ethos still fresh in his mind.
The audience, too, is complicit in this drama of distrust, as opposite sides eye each other across the middle ground of the stage. Tony Wakefield's lighting sensitively tracks the nuances of mood but is marred by a tendency to flood the stage with brightness at climactic moments.
Ill-advised, too is the decision to accompany the unfolding drama with tinkling background music. But overall, Henry's Playboy is a revelation, daring, intelligent and enlivening, goes to the nadir of Synge's community and hunts to the surface an ensemble of seemingly new characters.
Yet they're not new; rather, this is the dark-hued imagination of J.M. Synge laid bare.
