{"id":59107,"date":"2025-12-10T12:57:44","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T12:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/?p=59107"},"modified":"2026-01-08T00:14:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T00:14:41","slug":"heavenly-melancholy-an-irish-tragicomedy-at-the-national-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/londoncult.co.uk\/en\/heavenly-melancholy-an-irish-tragicomedy-at-the-national-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavenly Melancholy: an Irish tragicomedy at the National Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Irish actors\u00a0Sara Allgood\u00a0(“Widow Quin”) and\u00a0J. M. Kerrigan\u00a0(“Shawn Keogh”), in\u00a0The Playboy of the Western World<\/em>,\u00a0Plymouth Theatre, Boston, 1911
\u0424\u043e\u0442\u043e: Wikimedia.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Legend has it that audience members climbed onto the stage to fight the actors, while the actors fought back and kept performing. Such was the public outrage at the dawn of the 20th century when it was confronted with a comedy mocking the very, forgive the phrase, sacred \u201cmoral pillars\u201d of society. Moreover, Synge wrote The Playboy of the Western Worldwith great attention to the linguistic peculiarities of Ireland\u2014to Hiberno-English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Naturally, in 2025 Caitr\u00edona McLaughlin, who spent several seasons working at Dublin\u2019s Abbey Theatre, pays tribute to every layer of this famous play\u2019s history. An intellectual director who stages productions not only in her native Ireland (including opera), but also in London and New York, McLaughlin works with the text scrupulously and meticulously, devoting obvious attention to the inner lives of the characters. They inhabit the razor-sharp comic world of The Playboywith utter seriousness: an entire Buster-Keaton-like universe operates so that a ripple of laughter or a spark of live reaction may roll through the auditorium. And her work with accents is especially painstaking. The entire cast seems to breathe in Hiberno-English\u2014it is not a performed detail, but a massive pillar around which the entire museum-like structure of the production is built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMuseum-like\u201d not in the sense that the sets and costumes are generously dusted with suffocating mothballs. There is no mothball smell at all\u2014but there is monumentality, reverence for the text, and a university-bred intellectual rigor.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Megan Cusack, Fionnuala Gygax, Susan Akintomide, Marty Breen and Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney
Photo by Marc Brenner, nationaltheatre.org.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

All of this is abundantly watered with rain\u2014it pours, then stops, somewhere upstage, where the low pearly Irish sky flares up and darkens again. The beauty quite takes your breath away. Against this sky and rain, musicians slowly drift across the space: a distinctive Irish fiddle and another strange horn, more like a didgeridoo. Either the tin whistle has been reborn (imagine such a giant in Paddy Moloney\u2019s collection!), or it is the trump of Jericho, rumbling over a sinful world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is in this setting that the comedy unfolds: a frail good-for-nothing strikes his enraged father on the head, runs off, wanders through neighboring villages and hides. And the local girls admire his \u201cfeat\u201d so much that they long to claim the hapless hero for themselves. Retelling the plot would, first, only spoil it, and second, the play is so well known in the English-speaking world that its story seems familiar to every schoolchild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is, therefore, an ideal \u201cclassical\u201d production, where acting takes center stage.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Actress Nicola Cochlan, (“Mood” (2024)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

First of all, there is film star Nicola Coughlan\u2014the very one who played Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton. Her charm and magnetic allure, a God-given acting quality, have not vanished here. They have transformed in accordance with character. Pub owner Pegeen is young, but shrewd, capable, and seemingly free of illusions. So why does she become so visibly bewitched by the newcomer, Christy? Not because he is especially handsome, but because he is \u201csomeone new,\u201d because life is boring, because in a world where one day resembles the next like one pint resembles another, a completely unprecedented figure suddenly appears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And here is Widow Quin, played by Siobh\u00e1n McSweeney. At first it seems she turns the role into a sharply comic character part, but in fact there is no deliberately \u201cperformed\u201d comedy here. Widow Quin truly is just such an eccentric woman. She openly lures him into her stifling embrace, and it seems as if she is about to suck him into her scorching depths. He flees her like a praying mantis female, like the eternal terror of the vagina dentata. And Christy is cowardly in general\u2014but more on him later.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u00c9anna Hardwicke and Nicola Coughlan
Photo by Marc Brenner, nationaltheatre.org.uk<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It is interesting that the rivalry between the two characters\u2014Widow Quin and Pegeen\u2014seems to spill over into a rivalry between the two actresses. At any rate, partnership between them is scarcely visible\u2014perhaps the ensemble has not yet achieved perfect cohesion. This sparkling rivalry brings to mind Maugham\u2019s immortal novel Theatre. Who will outplay whom? Who will outshine whom in wit? Who will be more beautiful? And it is in this electrically charged space that the unfortunate, tiny, frail Christy exists\u2014precisely as \u00c9anna Hardwicke plays him. He is certainly no dashing hero, no lady-killer, but a small, miserable, lost boy. He is always cold, always hungry, he hides as a tiny cartoon mouse would hide\u2014certainly not as a romantic protagonist. He hides from everyone\u2014men, women, and his father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onstage we see the interior of the pub\u2014very modest. A few mismatched tables and chairs, a small bar counter. But there is a fireplace, with real fire burning in it, and the characters take turns running over to warm themselves. At moments one almost longs to join them\u2014they do it so cozily. The walls are cluttered with all sorts of junk, and of course it is all destined to be used\u2014like Chekhov\u2019s gun, which must fire if it hangs on the wall. A poor, everyday, utterly real environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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