Bleak Juno and the Paycock still rings true
This bleak Civil War tale of Dublin rings true today
There’s a distinct lack of glory and heroics about shooting and dying for Ireland in O’Casey’s Civil War play, set in a rundown Dublin tenement and first performed in 1924. It’s summed up in the exchange between a neighbour who commiserates with Mrs Tancred that her son died a noble death and that they’ll bury him like a king, to which she replies: ‘And I’ll go on livin’ like a pauper.’
And the talk of revenge killings and neighbour killing neighbour has an eerie modern ring to it, accompanied by what one character calls ‘the Irish people’s national regard for the dead’.
The men in the play are a dismal lot. Jack Boyle is a boozy, work-shy waster who depends on his haggard wife Juno to support him, and his buddy Joxer Daly is a parasitical hanger-on who’ll agree with anything that can get him grub or a pint. Bentham is a smug schoolteacher, whose pretensions ruin the family’s hopes, and who leaves Mary Boyle in the lurch. Johnny Boyle, crippled from 1916 and the Civil War, is lined up for execution by former comrades.
This production, directed by Mark O’Rowe, is a more bleak affair than you sometimes get. The combination of tragedy and humour is still there in the Boyle and Joxer capers, but it’s muted.
The gloom of blighted lives is over everything and even the singsong in honour of the illusory new wealth is low-key. O’Casey’s love scenes are always a bit cringemaking and Mary’s (Caoimhe O’Malley) drawn-out poetic farewell to her disillusioned lover Jerry seemed too long. Derbhle Crotty makes a heroic figure of the long-suffering Juno trying to save her disintegrating family, and Declan Conlon is totally convincing as the self-deluding Boyle. As Joxer, Marty Rea didn’t seem as assured as usual and a lot of his dialogue was unclear; he was more convincing in his angry bouts than as the wheedling sycophant. The fine large cast of supporting players included Ingrid Craigie as a scene-stealing Maisie Madigan.