In 2005, Druid presented the first ever staging of all John Millington Synge’s entire theatrical canon. Five of these plays are now available for online viewing.
Druid was founded in Galway in 1975 by Garry Hynes, Marie Mullen, and Mick Lally and was the first professional Irish theatre company outside of Dublin.
In Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows, Deirdre is loving and heroic and sets fate on when she induces the great young warrior Naisi to escape with her to Scotland, so avoiding marriage to the aged King Conchubar.
Riders of the Sea is set on the Aran Island, Inishmaan. The plot is based not on the traditional conflict of human wills but on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal but relentless cruelty of the sea.
In The Well of the Saints, Martin and Mary Doul are an old, blind couple of the roads. When a wandering Saint offers them the miracle of their sight restored, they gladly accept. But instead of finding joy and happiness, they discover a seeing world that is a lot more complicated than they could ever have imagined.
The Shadow of the Glen‘s Nora schemes a fresh union with a neighbor shepherd even while her husband’s body is not yet cold.
Synge’s great comic masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, tells the story of Christy Mahon, who stumbles into a public house in County Mayo claiming he has killed his father and so capturing the romantic attention of the daughter of the house, Pegeen Mike.