The Playboy of the Western World

John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World caused moral outrage at its 1907 premiere at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, and the premise shows why: a stranger walks into a pub in the west of Ireland claiming he has killed his father, and the locals make him a hero rather than shunning him, until a second man appears. The Ringling screens the National Theatre's filmed staging, directed by Caitríona McLaughlin, in its Historic Asolo Theater. Éanna Hardwicke plays the self-proclaimed patricide Christy Mahon, with Nicola Coughlan and Siobhán McSweeney in the company, and the cast speaks Synge's Hiberno-English with a darkly comic edge; the running time is about two and a half hours.