THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD and LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST, Yugen Theatre, at Footsteps Theatre. When it comes to ambitious rotating repertory, Court Theatre has a plucky north-side rival in Yugen. The 15 company members double up in two plays about the deceptions that can foster or kill love, enacting Shakespeare’s second-rate comedy indifferently and John Millington Synge’s inexhaustible 1907 delight superbly.
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The Playboy of the Western World is perhaps the most gorgeous play in our language, and in Lynn Ann Bernatowicz’s pitch-perfect revival it’s a two-hour, four-star joy. In the richly exaggerated plot, former wimp Christy Mahon gains a spooky notoriety when some County Mayo villagers come to believe he killed his father in a burst of rage. But his rhapsodic affair with Pegeen Mike, who adores him for the wrong reasons, is cut short when the truth becomes known, as the lovers learn the difference between “a gallant lie and a dirty deed.”
