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It’s a great coup for the National Theatre to have tempted Nicola Coughlan back to the stage from the stellar televisual orbit to which Derry Girls and especially Bridgerton have propelled her. Even if it’s for a classic of the Irish canon that’s notable more for its historic significance than its fleeting relevance to a contemporary audience.
In JM Synge’s 1907 comedy, feckless young Christy Mahon (Éanna Hardwicke) becomes a local celebrity and a heartthrob in a rural County Mayo pub after claiming he’s killed his father. You could say he goes viral in a sleepy, poor, priest-ridden community deprived of sensation. But the portrayal of poverty and repressed lasciviousness that caused riots when the play originally opened at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre now feel quaint and stereotypical.
