By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK? ***1/2

WHEN? Friday 5 December, opens 11 December and runs through 28 February 2026 RUNTIME 135 minutes (including a 20 minute interval)

A young man walks into a bar, confesses to the murder of his father and charms his way into the hearts of the people of County Mayo in the early 1900s especially no-nonsense barmaid Pegeen played by Bridgerton‘s Nicola Coughlan.

• Read on for reasons including why you should delay your date with The Playboy Of The Western World

The Playboy Of The Western World is an Irish classic and events take a dark turn when our anti-hero Christy, performed as a convincing outsider by Éanna Hardwicke (The Cherry Orchard, Donmar), discovers his father is still alive, shattering the romanticism spun around his story.

The play is loved for its use of Hiberno-English, heavily influenced by the Irish language, and there’s a lyricism about playwright’s John Millington Synge’s words that help Christy win over those around him.

Although we felt Coughlan’s (The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, Donmar Warehouse) diction a little harder to understand than we would have liked.

Coughlan is not the only former member of the Derry Girls cast here and the magnificent Siobhan McSweeney (Dancing At Lughnasa, National Theatre) steals the show as a widow with unlikely romantic designs on our titular playboy.

Playboy initially met with riots and protests in Dublin when it first premiered and the National has a great reputation for staging big productions of Irish material including the aforementioned Lughnasa and Translations well.

But on this night perhaps because this was a preview or down to the Lyttelton being such a gigantic stage where even from our row 7 seat it’s easy to feel far away from the action and thus uninvolved that it fell a little flat.

We were surprised it wasn’t all quite coming together particularly because we think Hardwicke in the lead role is a name to watch out for in the future.

McSweeney though is always worth seeing and here she is at her eye-rolling best as a woman who has been dealt a challenging hand but is determined to play it in the most beneficial way possible and turn it to her own advantage.

Playboy doesn’t actually open until next week and so there’s still time for the stars to align here and transform it into the production it should and could still be.

If you’re thinking of buying tickets, we’d recommend going later in the run for this Playboy which plays until 28 February 2026.

• Main pictures by Marc Brenner via Facebook courtesy National Theatre Tickets
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