Bringing JM Synge’s classic to life …
We speak with the distinguished set and costume designer as she prepares to portray the sartorial potency of JM Synge’s perennial classic, The Playboy of the Western World, in the National Theatre London with an interpretation spearheaded by the Abbey Theatre’s award-winning artistic director Caitríona McLaughlin.
The production has reunited Derry Girls stars Nicola Coughlan and Siobhán McSweeney, with Normal People star Éanna Hardwicke, against the backdrop of Davenport’s dynamic mise-en-scène. Below, the designer reflects on her pivotal role in weaving theatrical worlds, the expansion of her visual lexicon and the state of Irish theatre in contemporary culture.
La Traviata, Irish National Opera, 2024
You have created stunning scenography across the genres of opera, drama and dance. Do you have favourite projects? Recently, working on SAFE HOUSE by Enda Walsh at The Abbey (music by Anna Mullarkey), with a lovely gang of people. I felt we made something poignant and special together. Kate Gilmore sang one of the songs sitting on top of a wardrobe, and I cried every night watching her, she was so luminous and heartbreaking.
Roberto Devereux Chorus, Teatro Donizetti, 2024
What do you enjoy most about your work? I love scenography as an artform, the medium of live performance, and the chaos of it all. I like the variety of quiet mornings in my studio making models and sketching costume drawings – dreaming up worlds – and the contrast of the fervour and pace of rehearsals, putting the show together in the theatre. But it’s really the people you share the work with; directors, designers, performers and especially the costume community. Bustling around town with tarpaulin bags – the incredible seamstresses, machinists, tailors, breakdown artists, supervisors and dressers are the true dramaturgs of theatre.
Jade O’Connor, The Pillowman, Gate Theatre
How do you create compelling mises-en-scène? I’ve never been particularly interested in windows and walls. I don’t have this great love of architecture on stage. For me, it’s more about the air in the space – the atmosphere I feel as I read a text, or listen to a piece of music, and then trying to place that onto the stage. Sometimes, this manifests into something as small as a flickering light with a sad streamer attached to it. On other occasions, it’s a big walled unadorned space that traps a person inside. What I try to do is to make a space that can take shape during rehearsals with the performers – that it has enough fluidity to hold new ideas as they come up in the room.
What can audiences expect from The Playboy of the Western World? It’s a play set in a certain time and that has to be acknowledged. But like all great plays that we keep returning to, they’re there to be studied, pulled apart and reimagined for the world we live in now. It’s set on the coast of Mayo, on the edge of the Western World. I grew up in Roscommon in the ’90s, so I know that wild part of the world. I feel there’s something that still lives there, the mystic nature of life with superstition, poetry and curses. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And our colourful traditional clothing. There’s space for dreaming within all of that. The character of Pegeen has always stuck with me since school. I would often think about her. A few years ago, the Abbey Theatre invited me to design a café in the foyer of the theatre. I named it Pegeen’s in pink neon and, with the help of Abbey archivist Maireád, we also hung a John Butler Yeats painting of actor Máire Neill, known as Synge’s muse and the original ‘Pegeen’ to survey the foyer.
Tartuffe Scale Model, Abbey Theatre, 2023
How do you find the production process? The design process and collaborations with set builders, scenic painter, props makers, costume department and wigs, hair and make-up is really exciting. Working with Caitríona is wickedly good fun, we have a great shorthand and trust in each other, having worked on Tartuffe in 2023 and Audrey Or Sorrow in 2024. There’s always a great sense of humour and spirit in her rehearsal rooms. Anna Mullarkey, too, is an incredible composer and friend. I can’t wait to be moved by her work again.
Stephen Rea as Krapp, Krapps Last Tape, 2024-2025
Who do you admire in your industry? I admire a lot of artists, but I love the work of Anna Viebrock and Katrin Brack, and theatre maker Philippe Quesne, who directs and designs his own wild microcosms. I also enjoy the creations produced by William Kentridge, and visual artists Hans Op de Beeck, Thomas Demand and Alex de Corte. However, I always return to Monica Frawley who was my mentor, a fierce Irish theatre designer. She designed Playboy many times and was someone who could connect so viscerally to the bloodstream of a play with great humour, so I’m often thinking of her and what she would do.
How would you describe the current landscape for Irish creatives? I think it’s incredibly hard to be an artist in Ireland which is a shame as the work is so good here. The Basic Income for the Arts scheme changed so many artists’ lives, and I really hope it continues and expands. On a positive note, I do feel that artists in the theatre sector look out for other artists. We all try to help each other along, but we can only grow if the sector is being nurtured by the government.
Jessica Pratt as Elizabeth I, Teatro Donizetti, 2024
What has been the most memorable moment of your career to date? I won an Irish Times Theatre Award for costume design three years ago, which was a really great surprise. And taking a bow on stage after designing my first Italian opera, in Bergamo, with my parents and best pals in the audience.
What are your hopes for the future? My biggest dream was to design for the Abbey, my national theatre. I’m just trying to enjoy everything after that. The plan is to continue working a little at home in Ireland and internationally. There is this amazing festival in Bregenz, Austria called Bregenzer Festspiele. It’s an opera that happens on a lake – so the giant set is submerged in the lake, and the audience all sit around it, watching the sun set behind. The singers have to take little dressing room boats out to reach the performance space – hilarious. That would be a far reaching dream, but it’s nice to think about. I think it’s probably every theatre designer’s dream.
SEE MORE: In Conversation With Costume Designer Stacey Battat
