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It was a decade of tumult and experimentation in Irish theatre, and Synge’s ever-contemporary masterpiece ran like a charged current through proceedings, writes PETER CRAWLEY

THERE’S A GREAT gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed, says Pegeen Mike, and she ought to know. It may have been 102 years since she made her initial discovery in The Playboy of the Western World, but more recently, she has made it again and again, in a wide variety of ways. In fact, for all the innovation, determination and crisis of Irish theatre in the past 10 years, you could be forgiven for thinking that the defining play of this decade was actually written in 1907.