Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, written in anger and compassion, begins in farce and ends in tragedy. “What can God do against the stupidity of men?”
The action is set at the end of the Irish Civil War when the Diehards (hard-line Republicans) refused to accept the 1922 treaty and turned on their ex-comrades whom they believed had betrayed them.
“Good God, haven’t I done enough for Ireland? asks a young man, who has lost a hip and an arm in the Easter Rising. “No man can do enough for Ireland!” is the chilling response as he is dragged off to be shot.
Juno Boyle (J Smith-Cameron) is the stoic mother, the voice of sanity and reason: “Maybe it’s time we had a little less respect for the dead and a little more regard for the living.”
There was a time when O’Casey’s 1926 masterpiece was dismissed as “a sordid, squalid, photographic melodrama.” No longer. The transitions from comedy to tragedy and back again work perfectly.
The poor Boyle family, living in a squalid Dublin tenement, reel from one shock to another: an unwanted pregnancy, bankruptcy and death. Mark Rylance plays the pompous, idle, drunk paycock, “Captain” Boyle, one of the theatre’s major comic creations. His scenes with the scrounging, despicable wastrel “Joxer” Daly (Paul Hilton) are rooted in the best music hall tradition. Rylance, very Chaplinesque, moustache and all, regularly plays up to the audience.
Mrs Tancred has a great prayer: Mother o’ God, have pity on us all! Blessed Virgin, where were you when me darlin’ son was riddled with bullets? Take away this murdherin’ hate, an’ give us Thine own eternal love. The prayer is addressed to a character on stage rather than to the audience direct and loses much of its impact, the words getting lost in the staging. Matthew Warchus, the director, has also decided that the final moments of the play should be acted in an expressionistic manner rather than for reality and it doesn’t feel right at all.
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