By Dr. Patrick Lonergan

THE plays of John Millington Synge are deeply rooted in rural Ireland - in the Aran Islands of Riders to the Sea, in the Wicklow of Shadow of the Glen, and in the Mayo of The Playboy of the Western World. And of course The Playboy is firmly embedded in the history of this country too, mainly due to the violent protests that greeted its first performance in 1907. Seen as a key moment in the movement towards national independence, the "Playboy riots" exposed many of the divisions in Irish society - between rich and poor, unionist and nationalist, catholic and protestant, and so on.

But perhaps we're so used to thinking of Synge as a distinctly Irish playwright that we've lost sight of his international importance. Synge's plays, after all, are produced everywhere, and have inspired countless dramatists and actors around the world. And, significantly, many of his plays have been adapted by major writers from other countries - re-imagined for other times and places, re-cast into other languages.

There are many important examples of this phenomenon. The great Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca was clearly influenced by Synge's Riders to the Sea when he wrote his masterpiece Blood Wedding. On the eve of the Second World War, the German writer Bertolt Brecht also adapted Riders to the Sea, which he re-titled Senora Carrar's Rifles. Perhaps most famously, Mustapha Matura gave us a new way to think about The Playboy in 1950, when he transplanted it from Ireland to Trinidad in The Playboy of the West Indies. And as recently as 1999, an adaptation of Playboy by Vayu Naidu entitled Krishna - Playboy of the Asian World met with strong protests when it played at Leicester's Haymarket Theatre.

And as Ireland has itself become more internationalized, The Playboy has been reconceived for our changing society. In 2006, Pan Pan Theatre company re-located the play to contemporary China, in a production, which was a huge hit in Dublin, but caused a minor ruckus when it toured to Beijing - some of the actresses' skirts were very short, and the authorities objected. In 2007, a hundred years after the play first appeared, Bisi Adigun and Roddy Doyle came together to present a new version of The Playboy, which was commissioned by Arambe Theatre Company, and performed at the Abbey Theatre. Set in contemporary Dublin, it tells the story of a young Nigerian called Christopher Malomo, who seeks refuge in a west Dublin pub after he "kills" his father.

Such adaptations show that Synge's Playboy still has a great deal to say, both to and about Ireland. They reveal that the play shouldn't be seen as a classic to be dusted down every few years for a dutiful and reverential production, but as a living part of our culture. It is a provocative play, a mischievous play, and a very moving one too. But it also features an uncompromising commitment to the truth. "I am quite ready to avoid hurting people's feelings needlessly," Synge once wrote. "But I will not falsify what I believe to be true for anybody".

Those words in many ways encapsulate what Bisi Adigun achieves with his new version of the play. Like the original, it is devious and funny. But it's also willing to raise difficult questions about Ireland's past and present - about lingering sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland, about the dominance of alcohol in Irish social life, about the Ryan Report and the Christian Brothers, and - perhaps most provocatively of all - about why Waterford aren't in this year's All Ireland final. Like Synge, Adigun gives us a vision of Ireland that we must accept, however reluctantly, as grounded in the truth.

The Playboy of the Sunny South East clearly has a lot to say about Ireland today, but it also reminds us of the things that makes Synge's original so important. Like Synge, Adigun reminds us of the power of performance. Christy Mahon in both plays is essentially an actor. He transforms himself from a stuttering, hesitant fugitive, into a strutting, self-assured hero - before finally deciding to play the part previously occupied by his father. This transformation is made possible not because Christy is a murderer, but because he has an appreciative audience, who are delighted to hear his heroic story about resisting oppression.

We also learn a great deal in both plays about the relationships between men and women. Christy, after all, is a hero who spends large portions of his time on stage being dominated by women, especially the Widow Quin and Pegeen (called Mrs Quin and Peggy in the new version). Like Pegeen, Peggy's are the first and last lines in the play, and she drives and directs most of the intervening action. Performing the role requires the ability to project an intense loneliness and frustration but, interestingly, her character is revealed most by the traits she encourages in Christy. His portrayal of himself as the Playboy can thus be seen not a revelation of Christy's "true self", but rather as a physical expression of Peggy/Pegeen's hidden desires.

Finally, both Synge and Adigun share an awareness of how an outsider can transform a society. Christy's arrival - to Mayo and Waterford - allows the people in both places to imagine new possibilities, to become different and possibly even better people. Yet both plays also show that when a society is unwilling to face its own problems, it will always turn to the outsider as a scapegoat. For an Ireland facing as many challenges now as we did in 1907, this message is of vital importance.

Synge died exactly a hundred years ago, on 24 March 1909. Of course he could never have predicted how his work would take on new meanings for people around the world - and of course he could never have predicted how much Ireland would change during the last century. But I think he would have recognised his own spirit living on at the core of Playboy of the Sunny South East: his love of music and language, his interest in the ordinary people of Ireland, and - above all - his belief in the need to tell the truth, whatever the cost.

Dr. Patrick Lonergan lectures at NUI Galway. He writes about theatre for _The Irish Times_ and _Irish Theatre Magazine_ and is academic director of the Synge Summer School. His most recent book is _Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era_, which won the 2008 Theatre Book Prize.