The Playboy of the Western World

At the edge of the earth, you could be anyone.

Pegeen Flaherty’s life is turned upside down when, on a normal day, a young man walks into her pub claiming that he’s killed his father.

Instead of being shunned, the killer Christy Mahon becomes a local hero. The welcome murderer wins hearts and races as he beds himself into village life. That is until a second man unexpectedly arrives on the scene...

John Millington Synge’s riveting story of youth and self-discovery has been celebrated for decades. This new edition was published to coincide with the National Theatre’s 2025 production with a cast that included Nicola Coughlan as Pegeen Flaherty, Éanna Hardwicke as Christy Mahon and Siobhán McSweeney as Widow Quin.

Features notes by Christopher Collins, University of Nottingham.

John Millington Synge (1871-1909) is widely regarded as the greatest ever Irish dramatist. The lives of the people of Wicklow, Kerry, Connemara, Mayo and the Aran Islands were brought to life through his six great plays: In The Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1907), The Tinkers’ Wedding (1909), and his unfinished mythological drama Deirdre of the Sorrows (performed posthumously in 1910).