“Playboy of the Western World” is both the first chapter and the latest chapter in Todd Dicken’s life at Youngstown State University.

He is directing YSU Theatre’s production of John Millington Synge’s play, which opens Friday in Bliss Hall’s Spotlight Theater for a two-weekend run.

Forty-one years ago, during the winter quarter of his freshman year at YSU, Dicken was cast in a production of the comedy, directed by Frank Castronovo.

“I was a newbie in the cast, and I had a lot of upperclassmen that helped me out, helped me learn the ropes, and Dr. Castronovo was very patient with me,” Dicken said. “I was working in the scene shop for a class for play production, so I was building the scenery and painting it, and then I was out on stage, so I got the full experience.”

Dicken, who also is scenic, props and sound designer for the production, uses the play when teaching script analysis, and that exposure had some of the theater students at YSU expressing an interest in it.

“A couple of the faculty said, ‘You know, we really should do that. Students are talking about it. We should do it,'” Dicken said. “So here I am, 41 years later, sitting in the director’s chair and going through the process again with newbies.”

“Playboy” is the story of a man who shows up in an Irish bar telling a tale of killing his father. The yarn makes him a bit of a local hero and attracts the attention of the young women in town, but his status changes when his father shows up very much alive.

While it was written more than a century ago, there are elements that remain true today. For a college theater program, Dicken said there are benefits to exposing students to less-produced classics as well as more contemporary works.

“When you take students into a class like script analysis and you look at something like the work of Shakespeare or you look at ‘Playboy of the Western World’ or you look at ‘Antigone,’ you’re getting them to see that it’s human beings. We haven’t changed all that much, and some of the things that they were worrying about back then are some of the same things that we worry about today. You get to expose them to some of these universal themes.

“The fun part about a play like this is there’s so many wonderful characters. And I think one of the things I’ve done fairly well this go around is I’ve had the opportunity to really explore the other support characters, and not just focus on the central figures. Showing the students how playing those supporting roles can be just as important, and they can have so much more fun fully creating those characters. Even if they’re not speaking, things that they’re doing on stage in the background, become so much part of the story itself.”

The cast features Noah Dudai, Merrill Voytko, Cyrus Dzikowski, Samantha Cox, Ilse Zijlstra, Landon Eli, Nicholas Figiel, Anthony Mudryk, Lauren Ladd, Emalee Chappa, Natalie Ciccone and Crystal Fisher.

The student crew includes Chloe Downey, Jessica Sprague, Emma Barborak, Mal Ehrhart, Sam Law, Grace Beil and Anna Airhart.

Other production members include Katherine Garlick, costume and makeup designer; Ladd and Chappa, assistants to the director; Dicken as scenic, props, and sound designer; Barborak, assistant scenic designer; Ehrhart, lighting designer; Jon Zelezniak, lighting supervisor; Gunnar Carwile, scenic carpenter; Ellen Dayan, costume shop coordinator; and Adam Howard, dialect coach.

With its Ireland setting comes Irish accents. Dicken cast the show at the end of last semester and sent his actor home for break with tapes to help them with the dialect. But the challenge is to strike a balance between authenticity and audience comprehension.

“There were a few times when I said, ‘Look, I want you to get to the comfort level with the Irish dialect, but you have to also be careful not to fall in love with it so much that the audience can’t understand it,” he said. “What I’m shooting for with this is we want the flavor of the Irish dialect. It’s written in a very unique way. So even how the structure of the sentences are formed are a little bit different, because he (Synge) was really intrigued by the poetic quality of the country people in Ireland at that time. So we’ve got a little bit of that element there as well. I think it’s going to take some of our audience a couple minutes to kind of tune into it, but I’m hoping that we haven’t gone so far with it that it’s going to be difficult for people to understand.”

If you go …

WHAT: “Playboy of the Western World”

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday through Feb. 23

WHERE: Spotlight Theater, Bliss Hall, Youngstown State University

HOW MUCH: Tickets are $16 for adults, $12 for senior citizens, YSU alumni, faculty and staff and non YSU students and free for YSU students. Tickets are available online at www.ysu.tix.com and by calling 330-941-3105.