J.M. Synge Festival

In celebration of one of Ireland’s finest writers, Quintessence Theatre will present the complete works of J.M. Synge in performance and recitation.

The Playboy of the Western World

A young man walks into a rural tavern and declares that he has murdered his abusive father in self-defense. He is beloved by the locals and heralded as a hero until the truth of his past is revealed. A riotous comedy, JM Synge’s timely tale looks at the power of personality over facts, challenges the wisdom of popular opinion, and asks us what separates criminality from heroism.

The Synge Triptych

Three of Synge’s celebrated short plays will be performed in one evening. An older husband pretends that he is dead in order to test his younger wife’s fidelity in a black comedy, “In the Shadow of the Glen.” In “The Tinker’s Wedding,” a gypsy woman tries to find respectability by convincing a local priest to marry her to her sweetheart, only to find that marriage can be an expensive and soul-compromising business. And in his finest tragedy, “Riders to the Sea,” Synge depicts a family’s hopeless and fatal struggle to make a living off the impersonal but relentlessly cruel sea.

Following each performance there will be a special “Pint and a Poem” gathering in which Synge’s poetry will be recited and Irish stout will be served, and on festival weekends the company will present readings of Synge’s other plays": “The Well of Saints"“ and the unfinished “Deirdre of the Sorrows.”

Chris will appear as Shawn Keogh in Playboy and Bartley in Riders this fall!