DruidSynge, the Druid theatre company's mammoth eight-and-a-half hour production of all John Millington Synge's works, has opened in New York as the headline at this year's Lincoln Center Festival.
Mick Lally and a host of other Druid actors received a very positive reaction from more than 600 people who saw the work at a theatre at the John Jay College of Criminal Law in mid-Manhattan yesterday.
DruidSynge's director, Garry Hynes, is already known to New York's theatre-going public for her Tony award winning production of Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen Of Leenane.
Her latest interpretation of Synge has attracted huge attention in the New York arts world.
The New York Times published a 1,500 profile of her last week.
The Synge cycle will run for eight-and-a-half hours every day until July 23rd.
Tickets are only available for the whole production but patrons are allowed to leave in between plays - but only just.
"You've got like five minutes before they start up again," says Mary Davis, a retired school teacher from Manhattan's Upper East Side.
"I'm going out for a stiff drink at some point. The words are like music but you need a break after a few hours, you know what I mean?
"Good thing they have it in a criminal law college - there's so much death in this thing."
Ms Davis rates the performances of the first two plays - Riders To The Sea and The Tinker's Wedding as "outstanding".
"The sound of the sea in the first one was just so hypnotic, it carried you into the play.
"I didn't have a clue what they were talking about for the first five minutes but the sea carries you into their world and you understand."
Melissa James from Philadelphia intends to see it out to the very end.
She was thrown somewhat by the modern dress of the actors in The Tinker's Wedding.
"In Riders To The Sea, they're all in shawls, and then you have these Irish tinkers with tattoos and cheap jewellery and the woman has her boobs all over the place.
"I wasn't expecting that, but you go with it. I think it would be boring if they just kept to the same time period. It's exciting, a really exciting project," she said.
This is the first New York production of DruidSynge, which was first shown at the Galway Arts Festival in July 2005.
It has since played to sell-out crowds in both Dublin and Edinburgh.
Headlining the Lincoln Festival is a major achievement for Druid, which was founded in 1975 as Ireland's first professional theatre company outside Dublin.
Before coming to New York this month, Druid performed their Synge cycle at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis after being invited by the artistic director at the Guthrie, Irishman Joe Dowling.