Playboy of the Western World and Old/New Interculturalisms

Abstract

This chapter traces four key productions/adaptations of John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World mounted between 2004 and 2011. This includes two new productions of the original text (Druid Theatre’s production of Playboy as part of their 2005 marathon production cycle DruidSynge, and the 2011 Old Vic production of Playboy) and two explicitly intercultural adaptations (Pan Pan Theatre’s 2006 Chinese adaptation of Playboy of the Western World, which was performed at the Oriental Pioneer Theatre in Beijing and the Project Arts Centre, Dublin, and Irish novelist/playwright Roddy Doyle and African-Irish playwright/director Bisi Adigun’s Playboy of the Western World: A New Version, produced for the centenary of Synge’s play at the Abbey). Reading this cluster of Playboys against each other allows us to examine the tensions that emerged as Irishness (and Irish literary drama in particular) increased in contemporary currency as a global brand while at the same time the racial and ethnic diversity of the population multiplied in the 1990s and beyond.