The Abbey's staging of Synge's satire The Playboy of the Western World, on Jan. 26, 1907, stirred up so much resentment in the audience over its portrayal of the Irish peasantry that there was a riot. When the Abbey players toured the United States for the first time in 1911, similar protests and disorders were provoked when the play opened in New York City and Philadelphia.

The years 1907–09 were difficult times for the Abbey. Changes in personnel affected the management of the theatre, and the Fay brothers, whose commitment to nationalistic and folk drama conflicted with Yeats's art-theatre outlook, departed for the United States. Horniman withdrew her financial support, and the management of the theatre changed hands several times with little success until the post was filled by the playwright-director Lennox Robinson (Robinson, Lennox) in 1910. The onset of World War I and the Irish Rebellion of 1916 almost caused the closing of the theatre. Its luck changed, however, in 1924, when it became the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world. The emergence of the playwright Sean O'Casey (O'Casey, Sean) also stimulated new life in the theatre, and from 1923 to 1926 the Abbey staged three of his plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars, the last a provocative dramatization of the Easter Rising of 1916. In the early 1950s the Abbey company moved to the nearby Queen's Theatre after a fire had destroyed its playhouse. A new Abbey Theatre, housing a smaller, experimental theatre, was completed in 1966 on the original site. While the Abbey today retains its traditional focus on Irish plays, it also stages a wide range of classic and new works from around the world.