Shaw Festival’s ‘Playboy of the Western World’ is a century-old play that can teach us much about the folk heroes we idolize today

The Playboy of the Western World

By J.M. Synge, directed by Jackie Maxwell. Until Oct. 7 at the Shaw Festival’s Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, 10 Queen’s Parade. shawfest.com or 1-800-511-7429

A cunning outsider stumbles into a community languishing in the depths of ennui. He boasts about his heroism to capture the people’s attention while they, in turn, fetishize and exalt him as their saviour. All that, despite his carefully constructed backstory being nothing more than a mirage — a narrative built on lies.

Familiar as this might all sound, I’m not talking about Donald Trump, the billionaire and self-proclaimed outsider whose path to power was enabled under similar circumstances.

Rather, I’m describing the title character in “The Playboy of the Western World,” J.M. Synge’s canonical romantic comedy that, as directed and persuasively performed at the Shaw Festival, feels more like a perverse allegory about the folk heroes we idolize today.

Playboy Christy Mahon (Qasim Khan), the enigmatic figure who crashes into a small Irish town, could be a stand-in for any of the rule-breaking personalities who dominate our daily headlines. Think Andrew Tate, Marjorie Taylor Greene and, yes, Trump.

For Christy’s audience is not unlike their audience. And, like those individuals, his presence fulfils a desire that his followers didn’t even know they had.

In Christy’s case, his arrival at a tavern in Ireland’s County Mayo disrupts the sad state of stasis that pervades the lives of the townsfolk. His epic story of how he murdered his father enraptures the listening crowd.

Perhaps none more so than Pegeen Mike (Marla McLean), a pub owner’s daughter who is stuck in an unsatisfactory relationship with Shawn Keogh (Andrew Lawrie), a suitor unspectacular in almost every regard.

It’s easy to understand why Pegeen falls head over heels for the outlaw, caught up in the enchanting spell he casts. Khan’s Christy is beguiling, arresting, larger than the small-town life to which Pegeen has been confined.

Mercurial and ever changing, he enters the tavern forlorn and withdrawn. Limbs tucked to his chest, eyes averting the strangers’ gaze, he timidly recounts his bloody deed. However, his audience’s unlikely reaction, one of awe instead of disgust, begins to fuel his confidence.

And it isn’t just Pegeen fawning over the visitor: Widow Quin (a terrific Fiona Byrne) also longs for a new husband, while a trio of village girls (played by Jade Repeta, Alexandra Gratton and Sophie Smith-Dostmohamed, on for Kiana Woo) attempt to woo Christy with an array of gifts.

Much of Synge’s comedy stems from these unexpected, and frankly hilarious, interactions between the townsfolk and Christy, taken aback by their almost-too-gracious welcome.

“It’s great luck and company I’ve won me in the end of time — two fine women fighting for the likes of me — till I’m thinking this night wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in the years gone by,” he remarks.

Despite the inherent comedy, director Jackie Maxwell’s production (staged at the Studio Theatre named after her, the former Shaw Festival artistic director) also underscores the tragic setting where the action unfolds.

Maxwell transposes the play, first performed in 1907, to 1950s Ireland, “where the grim economic conditions and the depletion from immigration in rural Ireland closely matches that of Synge’s Mayo,” she explains in the program notes.

Samuel Sholdice’s sound design captures the harsh, windswept environment of western Ireland. Judith Bowden’s grey-toned set, meanwhile, evokes a community watering hole in decay: the peeling paint and ragged furniture an apt visual representation of the sorrowful state of its clientele. It’s Christy’s charismatic persona that becomes the only tether to another possible realm, one of active existence instead of passive subsistence.

Maxwell’s in-the-round staging is contained to the unpretentious tavern, lending the production an almost sitcom feel, as the community members all enter and exit to gawk at the fascinating newcomer.

What’s frustrating about the staging, however — either the result of misguided direction or meant to serve as a metaphor for something which I could not deduce — is that the production goes to great lengths in the first act to make us believe we are in this tavern. The characters make their entrances from two doorways. The pub, it seems, is enclosed with walls around the perimeter. But by the end of the first act and throughout the second, Maxwell has the actors jumping into and out of the tavern where the walls should be.

Perhaps this is a persnickety piece of criticism, but it makes “Playboy” more confusing than it already is. It’s a work that demands complete attention, starting with the characters’ thick Irish accents, which take several scenes to fully comprehend. Synge’s prose, too, is filled with figurative language, delivered at a blistering pace.

Much of the ensemble tackles this with aplomb. I will, however, single out actor Ric Reid in a key role that I’m loath to reveal. His character, who enters late in the first act, makes us question everything we knew about Christy. Reid captures not just the man’s pain and desperation, but also the comedy as he rolls into the tavern to confront Christy and the townspeople.

The scenes following his arrival lead to a high-octane conclusion that results in the townspeople turning on Christy faster than a social media “cancellation.” It’s then you come to appreciate how Synge so perceptively captures these dynamics, offering a fiery examination into how and why we choose to heroicize the people that we do.

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