Tag Archives: Juno and the Paycock

THE O’CASEY CYCLE: THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS

Irishman battles Irishman in Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through June 22, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep concludes its outstanding “O’Casey Cycle” with the third play in Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy, The Plough and the Stars. The controversial 1926 work, the follow-up to 1923’s The Shadow of a Gunman and 1924’s Juno and the Paycock, the semiautobiographical The Plough and the Stars is the earliest of the stories, taking place in 1915-16 around the Easter Rising, when the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army battled the British army and Dublin Fusiliers, Catholics against Protestants in a violent rebellion. Charlie Corcoran’s immersive set, which extends up the sides of the theater and down the hall, changes from a tenement apartment to a pub and the street outside as a close-knit collection of intriguing characters prepare for a fight.

The play begins in November 1915 in the living room of Jack Clitheroe (Adam Petherbridge), a bricklayer, and his wife, Nora (Clare O’Malley), an elegant woman who wants more out of life; he’s a bit disappointed as well, dismayed that he had been passed over for a promotion to captain in the ICA. Carpenter Fluther Good (Michael Mellamphy) is attempting to get rid of the squeak in the front door as nosy charwoman Mrs. Grogan (Úna Clancy) accepts a package for Nora and opens it to find a fancy hat. “Such notions of upper-osity she’s getting’,” she declares. “Oh, swank, what!” Nora comes home to find her uncle, the daffy Peter Flynn (Robert Langdon Lloyd), and Fluther having words with the Young Covey (James Russell), a wisecracking atheist and socialist who enjoys riling people with his progressive beliefs.

Nora (Clare O’Malley) begs her husband, Jack (Adam Petherbridge), not to join the fight in conclusion of Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Fruit vendor and Protestant loyalist Bessie Burgess (Maryann Plunkett) stops by to heap disdain on Nora, calling her a “little over-dressed trollope.” After everyone else leaves, Capt. Brennan (John Keating) arrives to tell Jack that he is the new commander of the eighth battalion of the ICA and must lead a reconnaissance attack, which upsets Nora, who wants him to stay home with her. Jack storms out with Capt. Brennan, and a distraught Nora is then visited by Mollser (Meg Hennessy), Mrs. Gogan’s sickly fifteen-year-old daughter who dreams of having the life Nora does. “I often envy you, Mrs. Clitheroe, seein’ th’ health you have, an’ th’ lovely place you have here, an’ wondherin’ if I’ll ever be sthrong enough to be keepin’ a home together for a man,” Mollser says. As a regiment passes by on its way to the front, Bessie sticks her head in to condemn the soldiers. It’s a brilliant first act, firmly establishing the characters, mixing in humor with dread as darkness awaits. “Is there anybody goin’, Mrs. Clitheroe, with a titther o’ sense?” Mollser asks.

The next three acts build on that extensive framework, with the addition of prostitute Rosie Redmond (Sarah Street), a barman (Harry Smith), a woman from Rathmines (Terry Donnelly) who is terrified of what is going on outside, and Jack’s flag-waving compatriots Lt. Langon (Ed Malone) and Sgt. Tinley (Smith). Director Charlotte Moore, the cofounder of the Irish Rep with Ciarán O’Reilly, knows the play well; she previously helmed the company’s 1988 production, its first show ever, as well as its 1997 revival. In honor of the Irish Rep’s thirtieth anniversary season, O’Reilly again is the voice of the speaker, as he was in 1988, spouting rhetoric to the assembled masses based on the words of Irish activist Padraig Pearse. The cast, most of whom also appear in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock, is exemplary, creating a wholly believable fictional world.

During the first week of the premiere of The Plough and the Stars at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1926, there were protesters and demonstrators angry with O’Casey’s treatment of Irish nationalism and religion, leading to a riot in which actor Barry Fitzgerald punched out a man who had climbed onstage, knocking him into the orchestra pit. “You have disgraced yourselves again,” senator and Abbey director W. B. Yeats said to the crowd. “Is this going to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?” The 2019 iteration of the play might not pack the same kind of wallop, but it is a potent portrayal of civil strife and the power religious and political disagreement has to tear apart friends and neighbors, something we know all too well given the current climate in America.

THE O’CASEY CYCLE: THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN

Minnie Powell (Meg Hennessy) and Donal Davoren (James Russell) flirt in Irish Rep revival of Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through May 25, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep’s thirtieth anniversary season, “The O’Casey Cycle,” features Sean O’Casey’s exceptional Dublin Trilogy. Last week I highly recommended Juno and the Paycock the 1924 play set during the Irish Civil War of 1922-23; 1925’s The Plough and the Stars, which takes place around the 1916 Easter Rising, was the first show Irish Rep ever put on, back in 1988, and will begin performances April 20. O’Casey’s first produced play was The Shadow of a Gunman, which premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 1923 and established the laborer as a new force on the scene. The play is set in May 1920, during the Irish War of Independence, in a tenement in Hilljoy Square in Dublin. Small-time peddler Seumas Shields (Michael Mellamphy) is sleeping late, something he appears to do often; while he waits for his colleague Mr. Maguire (Rory Duffy) to go out to sell their wares, a slew of other classic characters from Irish lore, from drunks and ne’er-do-wells to layabouts and overburdened women, come barging in.

Poet Donal Davoren (James Russell) is staying with him, which doesn’t make the landlord, Mr. Mulligan (Harry Smith), very happy, since the rent is overdue. The lovely young Minnie Powell (Meg Hennessy) develops a crush on Donal, believing him to be a heroic IRA gunman preparing for his next hit. “Maybe I am, and maybe I’m not,” he teases, taking advantage of the romantic attention. The blustery Tommy Owens (Ed Malone) stops by to let everyone know that he supports the IRA and will fight if called on. Mrs. Henderson (Una Clancy), who lives in a neighboring tenement, comes over with James Gallagher (Robert Langdon Lloyd), who reads a persnickety letter he wrote asking the IRA for help. And Mrs. Grigson (Terry Donnelly) is worried about her alcoholic husband, Adolphus (John Keating), who talks about himself in the third person. Maguire eventually shows up but is in a hurry, leaving a mysterious black bag with Seumas. Through all the mayhem and madness, the fear that the Black and Tans could show up at any minute hangs over the proceedings with so much dread.

James Gallagher (Robert Langdon Lloyd) seeks help from the IRA in The Shadow of a Gunman (photo by Carol Rosegg)

In the 105-minute two-act play, O’Casey avoids glorifying the lower class. “Upon my soul! I’m beginnin’ to believe that the Irish people are still in the stone age,” Seumas says, adding later, “Oh, this is a hopeless country!” Donal complains, “The people! Damn the people! They live in the abyss, the poet lives on the mountaintop . . . The poet ever strives to save the people; the people ever strive to destroy the poet. The people view life through creeds, through customs, and through necessities; the poet views creeds, customs, and necessities through life.” However, The Shadow of a Gunman is a slighter play than Juno and the Paycock, a less-layered tale lacking the same nuance and muscle. Charlie Corcoran’s fabulous tenement set, which runs throughout the theater, is only slightly altered from Paycock’s. Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly, who plays Capt. Boyle in Paycock, Gunman features many of the same actors, with Hennessy standing out as the coquettish Minnie and Donnelly reprising her role from the company’s 1999 production. In many ways, O’Casey’s vision of the country is personified by Seumas, who doesn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and does not want to go to work. “A land mine exploding under the bed is the only thing that would lift you out of it,” Donal says. It’s a funny line, but one more than tinged with seriousness.

THE O’CASEY CYCLE: JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK

Capt. Boyle (Ciarán O’Reilly) and his wife, Juno (Maryann Plunkett), see brighter days ahead in Juno and the Paycock (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Through May 25, $50-$70
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

The Irish Rep’s inaugural 1988–89 season included The Plough and the Stars, part of Sean O’Casey’s 1923–26 Dublin Trilogy; the company brought it back again in 1997. To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary season, the Irish Rep is presenting revivals of the first two plays in the trilogy, the 1924 Juno and the Paycock and the 1923 The Shadow of the Gunman, in repertory through May 25, along with screenings of the 1937 John Ford film version of The Plough and the Stars with Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, and Barry Fitzgerald and a reading series. For the occasion, which the Irish Rep is calling “The O’Casey Cycle,” the Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage theater has been transformed into a ramshackle 1920s tenement; Charlie Corcoran’s set extends well beyond the stage: Windows and brick walls run up the sides and down the hall, clothes are hanging to dry by the balcony, and there’s even a small bed hidden beneath the stairs by the restrooms. It’s now back in a “darling” adaptation after previous stagings at the Irish Rep by artistic director Charlotte Moore in 1995 and 2013–14.

Capt. Boyle (Ciarán O’Reilly) waxes philosophic with Joxer Daly (John Keating) in Sean O’Casey revival at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Juno and the Paycock takes place in 1922, during the Irish Civil War between the Diehard Republicans and the Free Staters, as matriarch Juno Boyle (Tony winner Maryann Plunkett) is trying to make ends meet in her family’s small apartment. Her husband, Capt. Boyle (Ciarán O’Reilly), spends most of his time, and what little money they have, hitting the pub with his best friend, the gangly ne’er-do-well Joxer Daly (John Keating), and complaining about terrible pains in his legs whenever the possibility of a job arises; their daughter, Mary (Sarah Street), is on strike with her trade union; and their son, Johnny (Ed Malone), is a bitter young man who lost an arm in the revolution and is worried that the IRA will show up at any moment to right a wrong. The Boyles hit the jackpot when schoolteacher Charles Bentham (James Russell) arrives to tell them that Capt. Boyle has inherited a significant sum of money from a dead relative. Mary, who has been courted by nudnik Jerry Devine (Harry Smith), begins dating the elegant Bentham, and the captain and Juno immediately start celebrating their good fortune by refurnishing their home and considering moving to a better location. But being a classic Irish melodrama about the futility of the working and lower classes, prosperity is not necessarily waiting for them around the corner.

Johnny (Ed Malone) is nervous as his sister, Mary (Sarah Street), and mother, Juno (Maryann Plunkett), try to calm him down in Juno and the Paycock (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Seamlessly directed by Neil Pepe, the longtime artistic director of the Atlantic Theater, Juno and the Paycock is a joy to behold. It’s somewhat reminiscent of The Honeymooners, only Irish, with Capt. Boyle / Ralph Kramden always scheming to fill his empty coffers, the none-too-bright Joxer / Ed Norton unwittingly by his side, offering comic relief, and Juno / Alice doing her best to keep it all together. “There’ll never be any good got out o’ him so long as he goes with that shouldher-shruggin’ Joxer,” Juno says about her husband. “I killin’ meself workin’, an’ he sthruttin’ about from mornin’ till night like a paycock!” As downtrodden as the times are, O’Casey injects plenty of humor into the story, which was also made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1930. The cast, which is very similar to the 2013–14 edition (the main changes are Plunkett as Juno and Street as Mary; Terry Donnelly has played neighbor Maisie Madigan in all three Irish Rep versions), is outstanding, fully embodying a troubled family and its tight-knit, suspicious community, making the most of O’Casey’s well-drawn characters.

The socioeconomic conditions of 1920s Dublin might not provide a lot of opportunities for the Boyles, but they also have to take a long, hard look at themselves for the desperate situation they’re in, at least some of which they bear responsibility for, as O’Casey explores the concept of living by one’s principles. It’s also about looking forward. “Maybe, Needle Nugent, it’s nearly time we had a little less respect for the dead, an’ a little more regard for the livin’,” Mrs. Madigan says to the tailor (Robert Langdon Lloyd). Joxer, wonderfully played by the tall, gangly, wild-haired Keating, the longtime Irish Rep treasure, has a habit of describing things as “darling,” and that’s just what this production is, a darling adaptation of a powerful, poignant play.