At Home and Abroad

For several years John P. Kelly was Head of Radio Drama output with RTE, the Irish equivalent of Canada’s CBC.
Having trained as a theatre director with Ireland’s famous National Theatre, the Abbey, he joined the broadcaster “to make some real money.”

The Playboy of the Western World is a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge and first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on 26 January 1907. It is set in Michael James Flaherty's public house in County Mayo (on the west coast of Ireland) during the early 1900s. It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man running away from his farm, claiming he killed his father.
Riots occurred in January 1907 during and following the opening performance of the play. The riots were stirred up by Irish nationalists and republicans who viewed the contents of the play as an offence to public morals and an insult against Ireland. The riots took place in Dublin, spreading out from the Abbey Theatre and finally being quelled by the actions of the Dublin Metropolitan Police.

The fact that the play was based on a story of apparent patricide also attracted a hostile public reaction. It was egged on by nationalists, including Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, who believed that the theatre was not sufficiently political and described the play as "a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform". With the pretext of a perceived slight on the virtue of Irish womanhood in the line "a drift of females standing in their shifts" (a shift (garment) being a female undergarment, similar to a nightgown), a significant portion of the crowd rioted, causing the remainder of the play to be acted out in dumb show. Nevertheless, press opinion soon turned against the rioters and the protests petered out.