A Player's Reflections on Playboy

Abstract

I WRITE PRIMARILY AS AN ACTOR, which must at once set up a suspicion that what I say will be considerably coloured with ego and possible bias. So be it: I write out of my experience of playing Synge, and in particular the role of Christopher Mahon, which I have played over a period of just on twenty years—from 1936 to 1955—ranging from Dublin, through the Irish provinces, to London and Paris. It is the one of all his characters through which, to my mind, almost to the point of identification a player may reach closest to the essential Synge, the playwright in search of himself.