Ithaca College

On Thursday, April 23, at 6:30 p.m. in the Handwerker Gallery, the On the Verge playreading series will present a staged reading of J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World.  The cast will feature Ithaca College students from both the theater arts and English departments, as well as two English department faculty members (Professors Kevin Murphy and Michael Twomey), and it will be directed by Claire Gleitman, also a faculty member in English.  

Synge's Playboy was one of the most controversial plays ever produced in Ireland: when it premiered in 1907, it provoked riots and was viewed as an insult to Irish national pride and Irish womanhood.

Today, the play -- which laces exuberant comedy with sharp satire and hints of tragedy -- is regarded as one of the classics of modern theater. The "playboy" of the title is a cowardly boy who is transformed into a man when he inadvertently acts out the unconscious desires of a peasant village through a dramatic act that turns out to be not quite what it seems.