The infamous riots at ‘The Playboy of the Western World’ took place this week in 1907. Colin Murphy uncovered some old diaries with an account of the week by an ordinary theatregoer…
Saturday January 26, 1907
Went to John Synge’s new play tonight, ‘The Playboy of the Western World’. Rehearsals had been held in secret, and there’d been rumours it was going to be controversial. I’m not surprised. Synge’s material is the same as before – that great grasp of the wild tongue of the peasant folk of the West, that same pursuit of unflinching truth. But he takes it much further this time.
The story tells of a son who kills his father, and is then welcomed as a hero in another village. Both that and the language are deliberately provocative. The audience grew steadily more uncomfortable, and then broke into outright complaint, with boos and hisses. It was difficult to hear the actors sometimes, there was so much noise coming from the pit.
I wonder if Synge has overdone it this time? I’ll go again tomorrow to see what happens.
Monday January 28, 1907
To say today’s reviews were harsh would be something of an understatement. The Freeman’s Journal said ‘The Playboy’ was an “unmitigated, protracted libel upon peasant Irish men and women”. The Irish News said it was “a wretched, dunderheaded farrago of blasphemy, obscenity and caricature”.
The Irish Times was more moderate: Synge was remarkably successful in his realistic portrait of peasant life, but had been badly advised with regard to the harsher moments of the dialogue.
“People here will not publicly approve of the indiscriminate use of the Holy Name on every possible occasion,” they warned.
Well, tonight certainly proved them right. The crowd was small, about 80, and there was an organised opposition group among them. They tried to drown out the play completely, booing, hissing and groaning. WG Fay (who plays the Playboy) tried to speak to them, and got out a few words at least: he’s from Mayo himself, he said, so he knew that the play was true to life there. But they shouted him down.
The Abbey must have sent for the police, because a group of about nine officers arrived. But the protestors kept up the din. It turns out that there’s no crime in simply shouting down a play – there has to be a complaint of disorderly conduct, or something. So the police did nothing, and eventually they trooped out again.
From there till the end it was basically a dumb show: the play went on, but you couldn’t hear a word. The Abbey says they’re determined to continue with the play. I’ll be there.
Tuesday, January 29, 1907
Lady Gregory, at least, wasn’t going to take things on the chin. She has a nephew in Trinity, and she asked him to bring some friends along tonight, to help keep order.
But they arrived jarred, and were making quite a racket themselves. They and the protestors were obvious cliques amongst the packed audience.
Just before it started, WB Yeats came on stage. “As long as there is one man in the audience who wishes to hear it we will go on producing it, and our patience will last longer than your patience,” he said. There were cheers.
The play started well, but then somebody heckled. Lady Gregory’s boys jumped to their feet, demanding the fellow be thrown out. There was a loud groan, and then the lads turned to challenge the whole audience.
This got the protestors to their feet, and now both groups were roaring at each other. Somebody joined in on a penny trumpet. Yeats came out again. “If this play is bad, it will die without your help,” he said. But as soon as he was gone, the racket started again.
They stopped the play, and threw out one of the crowd, who was drunk. When the play got going again, we couldn’t hear anything at all. A fellow in the audience got up and tried to talk to the house. “I will ask you not to pass judgement on this play until you have heard it,” he said. There were cheers, but someone shouted out, “There are no murderers in the West”.
The police arrived, about 16 of them. They lined along the back of the theatre, and things calmed down, briefly.
The din started up again, and the whole audience turned towards the back of the theatre, to see what the police would do. The protestors started hammering the floor with their boots, so that the police couldn’t tell who was making the noise. The play continued, but not only could you not hear it, nobody was looking at it.
After a while, it went quiet, more or less, for a bit, and the play went on. Then, near the end, the Playboy, Christy Mahon, said, “what’d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself”.
“That’s worthy of the slums of London,” shouted someone. “That’s your country,” someone shouted back. “Go home and kill your father,” was the retort to that.
When it was over, Lady Gregory’s boys launched into ‘God Save the King’. The other lot replied with ‘A Nation Once Again’ (they won). The police went to move the groups out of the theatre, and it got a bit messy, with a few smacks thrown.
Outside on the streets, the gangs started singing at each other again, and the police had to move them apart. Later, as I was walking home down Westmoreland Street, there were fisticuffs between two of them, and I saw the police arrive to break it up. I think one of the students was arrested.
Wednesday, January 30, 1907
Tonight’s was one of the largest crowds the Abbey has ever had. There was standing room only. Most seemed to be there to hear the play, and with a large number of police in the theatre, it was much calmer than last night. Any time someone heckled or groaned (“Go back to England!” somebody shouted once), people would call out for “fair play”. Two young fellows who evidently disagreed about the merits of the play had a fistfight at the end of the second act, but the police soon broke it up.
Thursday, January 31, 1907
All quiet at the Abbey! Yeats and Synge have won, it seems – though they did have to cut some of the worst lines from the play. There were protestors there again, but also about 30 police, and it never got out of hand. The worst of it was when all the protestors simultaneously broke into a sustained fit of coughing, but they soon tired themselves out.
Saturday, February 2, 1907
The Playboy finished tonight, to huge applause in a packed theatre. There were police all over the place, and there was more noise from the frequent applause than from the small group of protestors.
Monday, February 4, 1907
There was a debate tonight at the Abbey. Yeats defended calling in the police, but others complained that the Abbey had relied on the protection of “the garrison” instead of the sympathy of the public.
Yeats finished by telling us where the story of ‘The Playboy’ came from. Ten years ago, he and Synge visited the Aran Islands. A crowd greeted them one day, and presented to them the oldest man on the island, who made a short speech.
“If any gentleman has done a crime, we’ll hide him,” he said.
“There was a gentleman who killed his father, and I hid him in my house six months till he went away to America.”
So it was true to life after all. Maybe it will live on.
This reconstruction is based on the reports of that week in the Irish Times, and on the accounts in ‘Playboys of the Western World: Production Histories’, edited by Aidan Frazier and published by Carysfort Press, and ‘Behind the Scenes’, by Adrian Frazier.
The 2009 production of ‘The Playboy of the Western World’, in a modern version by Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle, continues at the Abbey till January 31.