AN OTHER PLAYBOY: AND OTHER PLAYS Paperback – June 17, 2025

"[Adaptations of] Synge's Playboy reveal that the play shouldn't be seen as a classic to be dusted down every few years for a dutiful and reverential production, but as a living part of our [Irish] culture. It is a provocative play, a mischievous play, and a very moving one too. But it also features an uncompromising commitment to the truth. "I am quite ready to avoid hurting people's feelings needlessly," Synge once wrote. "But I will not falsify what I believe to be true for anybody".Those words in many ways encapsulate what Bisi Adigun achieves with his new version of the play, An Other Playboy. Like the original, it is devious and funny. But it's also willing to raise difficult questions about Ireland's past and present - about lingering sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland, about the dominance of alcohol in Irish social life, about the Ryan Report and the Christian Brothers, and even the more day-to-day questions about why Waterford weren't in this year's All Ireland final. Like Synge, Adigun gives us a vision of Ireland that we must accept, however reluctantly, as grounded in the truth.So, An Other Playboy has a lot to say about Ireland today, but it also reminds us of the things that make Synge's original so important. Like Synge, Adigun reminds us of the power of performance. Christy Mahon in both plays is essentially an actor. He transforms himself from a stuttering, hesitant fugitive, into a strutting, self-assured hero - before finally deciding to play the part previously occupied by his father. This transformation is made possible not because Christy is a murderer, but because he has an appreciative audience, who are delighted to hear his heroic story about resisting oppression." Patrick Lonergan Read more