Last night, I saw
Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock
at Irish Repertory Theatre. It's part of a trio of O'Casey plays the company is
putting on through May. Right now, just Juno is running, but all three will be playing in rep May 11-25.
I'd already seen
Irish Rep's production of The Shadow of a Gunman, which stars Meg Hennessy and James Russell in a story about the
Irish War of Independence. Both Hennessy and Russell do excellent jobs in a
play that starts out as a witty comedy and turns devastatingly tragic.
Juno and the Paycock similarly has tonal shifts, but rather
than simply beginning as a comedy and turning into a tragedy, it deftly weaves together
different dramatic strands into a tapestry that can be stunning in its beauty. The Shadow of a Gunman was O'Casey's
first play to be professionally produced, so it's only natural that he should
have learned a thing or two for his second big play.
Instead of
experiencing a sophomore slump, O'Casey had a hit with Juno and the Paycock, which like The Shadow of a Gunman opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The Abbey
had been involved with a number of controversial plays, including William Butler Yeats' Cathleen Ni Houlihan, John
Millington Synge's The Playboy of the
Western World, and George Bernard Shaw's The Showing-Up of Blanco Posnet. What they didn't have was
financial success.
All that changed
when they discovered O'Casey. The Abbey had rejected O'Casey's play The Frost in the Flower but encouraged
him to keep writing. When he sent them The
Shadow of a Gunman, they knew they had something special. The play's
success was exceeded, however, by Juno
and the Paycock. That play opened in 1924, a year after a ceasefire had ended
the Irish Civil War that had followed the nation's independence. O'Casey dealt
explicitly with the Civil War in his play, but allowed audiences to sympathize
with all those who had died, which was perhaps a key to its popularity.
Militants who
rejected the peace with Britain, who wanted to keep fighting until Ireland was
out of the Commonwealth and the counties in Northern Ireland joined the
Republic, were known as Diehards. They continued to wage war against the new national
government just as they had against the British. Meanwhile, those who sided
with the newly independent Irish Free State were known as Staters, and both sides were
subject to assassination. In O'Casey's play, Juno Boyle fails to sympathize with
a neighbor when her son is killed for being a Diehard, but then her own son is
taken by the Diehards for being a Stater.
"Ah, why
didn't I remember that then he wasn't a Diehard or a Stater, but only a poor
dead son!" she says toward the end of the play. "Sacred Heart o'
Jesus, take away our hearts o' stone, and give us hearts o' flesh! Take away
this murdherin' hate, an' give us Thine own eternal love!" That must have
resonated after the close of the Irish Civil War, just as it resonates today in
the shadow of so much war and death.
Maryann Plunkett
does an exceptional job as Juno in what is her Irish Rep debut (though she has
a long list of Broadway and off-Broadway credits). Director Neil Pepe, best
known for being the Artistic Director of the Atlantic Theater Company, helms the
production, and Irish Rep regular Ciarán O'Reilly plays Captain Jack Boyle, who
struts around like a "paycock" in the play.
Special kudos go
to scenic designer Charlie Corcoran, who has managed to turn the interior of
the theatre at Irish Rep into a set of early-20th-century tenements that can be
used for all three O'Casey plays the company is doing. The third play, The Plough and the Stars, will begin
performances April 20th.
