PLAYBOY OF THE WEST INDIES
The “playboy” of Synge’s story is Christy Mahon, a handsome youth who staggers into a tiny, clannish community telling a tale of patricide: while they were digging potatoes, he crushed his abusive father’s head with a spade. This deed, rather than making Christy a pariah, turns him into a celebrity, feared and lionized for his bravery by the men and pursued by the women–most notably Pegeen Mike, the hot-tempered daughter of the local saloon keeper. Buoyed by all the attention, Christy–at home a shy, lazy, oversensitive lad, weak-willed and afraid of women and branded a fool by his bullish father–blossoms as a “playboy,” a star athlete and eloquent lover who can roughhouse, revel, and romance with the best of them. But his superstar image is shattered when his father–severely wounded but very much alive–comes after the lad. How Christy resolves his crisis–and at what loss of innocence–is the crux of the comedy.
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In the leads, Don Franklin and Celeste Williams make an attractive pair of lovers, and Franklin nicely captures Ken’s mixture of sensitivity and self-centeredness; unfortunately, he’s less at home with the thick West Indian accent than the rest of the cast, and his climactic surges of anger become hard to understand for anyone who doesn’t know the original. And Williams, though lovely and intelligent, lacks the fire of Peggy; she comes off as a bit of a drudge. We need to see the hugeness of the human spirit in her in order to appreciate the tragedy of her foolishness as she chases her lover away.
