Critics have been unanimous in their praise of Druid Theatre’s revival of six plays by the early 20th-century dramatist John Millington Synge.
The ambitious production opened in Galway on July 16 and transfers to the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin on August 2 for two weeks. It will also tour at the Edinburgh Festival.
Much of the praise has been lavished upon director Garry Hynes. But actress Marie Mullen has also been feted, with one reviewer hailing her as “the greatest Irish actress since Siobhann McKenna”. The contributions of Mick Lally, Gemma Reeves and Aaron Monaghan have drawn positive notices too.
Hynes says she is pleased by the reaction to the production, which takes in the Synge pieces The Shadow of The Glen, The Playboy of The Western World, The Tinker’s Wedding, The Well of The Saints, Riders To The Sea and Deirdre of The Sorrows.
She explains: “The response is really pleasing and inspiring and rewarding particularly when it is a project that we have been involved with for so long and that has taken such a lot of work from everybody.
“We’ve been planning to do this for five, six years and we’ve actually been building the cycle over the past two years and in rehearsal for this set of plays since early April.”
But why did Hynes decide that Synge was worth revisiting on such an epic scale?
“It’s not so much revisiting as visiting,” she responds. “And part of the reason is that some of these plays are so rarely seen, such as Deirdre of the Sorrows, Riders To The Sea, Well of the Saints, Tinker’s Wedding. In fact, the majority of his canon is relatively unproduced.
“And all the plays have never been done together. But what’s really exciting for me, in doing all the plays together, is that Synge is very much a writer who wrote all these plays within a very short period of time, from about 1903 to when he died in 1909.
She adds: “It always felt to me that the works refer to each other, they are interdependent, they are a man’s lifetime vision and they are very coherent in that sense. So to me it makes complete sense to do them all together.”
Hynes also feels “totally delighted” for the actors and the rave notices they are receiving.
”Well they are a tremendous company of actors” she suggests. “And Marie, Eamon, Aaron and Mick, to a certain extent, dominate the cycle.
“But the work by the other actors, particularly the younger actors, is also wonderful. There are 17 actors in all, plus a child actor. But working on this, as a director, really has reminded me – and so many of the actors – that Synge is one of the world’s greatest writers and I’d love to see him done as often and as broadly as possible.
Hynes is looking forward, in particular, to taking the production to Edinburgh. Despite his profile, Synge is not a playwright whose work is regularly performed abroad.
“Overall, he’s very rarely produced outside Ireland at all. He’s a writer that is extremely well known and when you say his name everyone recognises his name but people globally don’t get that many opportunities to see his work.”
All of which will change over the next year or so, thanks to Druid. This, believes Hynes, will make the hard work worthwhile.
“It’s not just that John Millington Synge was a founding member of the Abbey Theatre and one of our most important writers,” she muses. “In fact, if someone sent in any of these plays and I didn’t know who it was, I’d do them because they are terrific and as modern and as radical as they were when they were written.”