Friday, April 28 and Saturday, April 29 at 8 p.m.; Sunday, April 30,
Wednesday, May 3, and Thursday, May 4 at 7:30 p.m.; Friday, May 5 and
Saturday, May 6 at 8 p.m. Loeb Drama Center. Tickets available through
the Harvard Box Office, (617) 496-2222 and the Loeb Drama Center Box
Office, (617) 547-3800. $12 general admission; $8 students, Harvard
affiliates, and seniors.
The production team of “The Playboy of the Western World”
wants you to consider playwright John Millington Synge to be the Irish
Shakespeare. Sure, he may have lived and written some 300 years after
the Bard himself, but never mind that. According to director Aoife E.
Spillane-Hinks ’06, Synge’s “Playboy” overcomes its heavy use of
dialect and antiquated setting—early 20th-century Ireland—to achieve a
certain universality and applicability, even for modern audiences.
This particular iteration of “Playboy” seems riddled with
contradictions. Although the language, setting, costumes and music are
all appropriate representations of a bygone Ireland, the pop-art
posters advertising the production suggest a garishly modern piece.
Actor Liam R. Martin ’06 addresses this multifarious
character: “It’s a totally different language from a different time in
a different accent, … [and] it’s spectacular in every sense of the
word,” he says. “It’s almost a musical theater-type show without the
music, not just in the lilting quality of the language, but also in the
enormity of the story.”
These elements cohere under Spillane-Hinks’ skilled direction:
“She’s an amazing visionary,” says Martin. “She works very intensively
with every cast member to create an entire picture.”
Spillane-Hinks—who grew up with a knowledge and appreciation
of Synge and Irish culture more generally—sought to preserve the play’s
deeply Irish roots. A Folklore and Mythology concentrator, she
incorporated the historical elements of Irish culture and
storytelling—specifically pertaining to “Playboy”—into her senior
thesis. She has also arranged for musicians from the campus Celtic Club
to orchestrate the production
Musical director Molly J. Hester ’08, along with Lindsay K.
Turner ’07, has organized a small musical ensemble to bookend “Playboy”
and to punctuate its action. The instrumentation is traditionally
Irish, and certainly unique to the production. The accordion, fiddle,
Uilleann (dubbed “indoor bagpipes” by Hester) and bodhran (an Irish
percussion instrument) will accompany a vocal musician who, according
to Spillane-Hinks, spans the gap between music and theater, and who
will introduce the performance in a manner reminiscent of a
Shakespearian prologue.
The cast expects this eclectic mix to resonate deeply with the Harvard audience.
“The words are foreign, but the humor in it is completely
accessible,” says Spillane-Hinks. “[The action] could take place in
Iowa; it could take place on the stage of Jerry Springer. The
fundamental desires of human pettiness and beauty are universal. Not
specific to one place.”
Martin echoes her sentiments: “There’s never a boring moment
in the show,” he says. “There are so many ambiguous little elements to
the play…the show lends itself to a different production every night.”
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