It may be 8,400km from Mayo to Beijing but one of Ireland's most innovative theatre companies, Pan Pan Theatre, reckons the universal themes of J.M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World will also strike a chord in the eastern world and began rehearsals for a Chinese version yesterday.
The production will be performed in Mandarin Chinese with an all-Chinese cast, lifting Christy Mahon and his beloved Pegeen Mike out of their natural habitat in Co Mayo in the early years of the last century and placing them in a hairdresser's and foot massage salon in the rapidly vanishing old areas of the outskirts of contemporary Beijing.
"The normal business of hairdressing takes place out front but there are other less mundane activities happening elsewhere on the premises," promised director Gavin Quinn, who said the first day's rehearsals went well.
True to the spirit of the play, the Chinese Playboy will use plenty of contemporary Chinese idiom and slang, although it remains to be seen if its opening in Beijing will cause quite the same stir as it did at its debut in Dublin nearly 100 years ago when it stoked the fires of nationalism and pushed the bounds of decency.
"The actors thought it was very funny, which is great. There is a certain strangeness for a Chinese cast working with a foreign director, and I get the sense Chinese actors are bit shyer than Irish actors. But overall the cast is extremely conscientious, disciplined and hard-working. They really want to make it work," said Quinn.
Synge's story of anti-hero Christy Mahon, who claims to have killed his father, has parallels in both contemporary Chinese literature and classical Chinese philosophy. The great philosopher Confucius says there are five core relationships that maintain social order, and one is that between father and son.
"The story is good and it's carrying a lot on its back. There is the contrast between urban and countryside, and this clash of cultures gives the audience something to grab on to," said Quinn.
It is the first major Irish theatre production in Beijing since the Gate Theatre's production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot during the China-Ireland Arts Festival in 2004, which was greeted warmly but with a certain amount of bafflement.
Playboy will run in the Beijing Oriental Pioneer Theatre, which is affiliated to the Grand National Theatre Company of China.
It opens on March 16th and runs until March 25th. It will be jointly produced by Pan Pan, Beijing Oriental Pioneer Theatre and independent theatre producers Vallejo Ganter (ex-director of the Dublin Fringe Festival) and Zhaohui Wang, an independent producer in Beijing.