By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
A quartet of village ladies are enchanted by the remarkable heroics of Christopher (Hunter Hnat) in "The Playboy of the Western World.
Newer plays may seem more timely, but they often lack the genuine heft of those theater classics that have spanned several decades of cultural change by tapping into humanity's deeper experiences.
Opening its own heart-squeezing example is The Rogue Theatre with “The Playboy of the Western World” by Irish playwright John Millington Synge. At the world premier in 1907, Abbey Theatre audiences were said to have started riots over Synge's untouched depiction of Ireland's own village people.
For us modern folk, a century of time has already eclipsed the traditional meaning of that word “Playboy,” which Synge intended to describe a young athletic hero, more bold than all the others. Several times within the play Synge includes this title to emphasize the fame and the plight of Christopher Mahon (Hunter Hnat).
Onstage, Hnat is giving the performance of his life as the mercurial Christopher, a hapless loser in the opening scenes who finds himself lost in a strange town, muttering to anyone who will listen that he just killed his own father with one bloody blow of a shovel.
But the hapless provincials themselves are kind of fascinated by this bravado. “The victim must have deserved it,” they agree, and quickly turn Christopher into their personal hero.
With Cynthia Meier as director, the players then explore Synge's study of the double-edged nature of fame to create villains as well as heroes, when Christopher's supposedly deceased father (Joseph McGrath) shows up looking very much alive and quite angry about it.
As McGrath gathers himself into a raging ball of rolling energy he sputters and growls his intentions to set the record straight.
Hnat's own convincing rise, fall and ensuing struggle for survival not only must out-do his own father, but Hnat also attracts the fond female attention of Margaret (Bryn Booth), a respectable local lass, as well as the unabashed determination of the more mature Widow Quin (Sophie Gibson-Rush). The natural chemistry between Hnat and Gibson-Rush is so strong sighs could be heard escaping from the audience.
A cast of 13 in roles both large and small combine to create a colorful group of eccentrics being pummeled by their own imaginations of who is right and who is wrong. Yet their mercurial ability to turn against their own heroes feels as modern as today.
“The Playboy of the Western World” runs through Feb. 2, with performances at various times Fridays-Sundays in The Rogue Theatre, 300 E. University Blvd. Run time is approximately two hours, including intermission. Tickets are $47. For details and reservations, visit www.theroguetheatre.com or phone 520-551-2053.
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