Gielgud Theatre, til 23 November 2024

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Some good elements don’t always sit well side-by-side.

The history of Ireland and its tense internal divisions have spawned many literary depictions. It’s the Irish Civil War that forms the backdrop for Sean O’Casey’s much-lauded play Juno and the Paycock, written contemporaneously in 1924. O’Casey uses the personal to tell the story of the political, his narrative centring around a downtrodden Dublin family barely held together and barely getting by. Patriarch of the family “Captain” Jack Boyle is an out-of-work wastrel and an alcoholic to boot, whiling away his days drinking with his equally idle mate Joxer. This of course causes great strife to his put-upon wife Juno, who earns the family’s income while also keeping the house and constantly trying to find work for her reluctant spouse. Rounding out the family are the bright and socially-minded daughter Mary, an outspoken campaigner with her union, and the depressed, often bedbound Johnny, mentally scarred by his time as a soldier but also indulged as the favoured elder son. The promise of an inheritance from a wealthy relative suggests the family’s fortunes may be about to turn, but the second act proves it won’t be that easy for the Boyles to lift themselves out of their troubles. 

The play is a tragi-comedy, and both elements are dialled up to the maximum. Some scenes are pure slapstick; as the Captain, Mark Rylance gets plenty of comedic mileage out of his slurring drunk, with railing monologues against Juno’s henpecking and plenty of physical blunders. But the play pulls no punches when it comes to showing the darker side of poverty, destitution and living in the shadow of political upheaval. The consequences of Johnny’s traumatising military service are more than just psychological. A funeral procession of the Boyles’ neighbours lays bare the true loss of war through the unbridled grief of a dead soldier’s mother. 

While I think both the comedy and the tragedy work quite well in some scenes, there are also ways in which both elements seem a bit dated. I’m sure the dynamic of the nagging wife and indolent husband is intentionally satirical, but it’s hard not to feel as though it’s a joke we’ve heard plenty of times before. Similarly, some of the sadder character resolutions at the end of the story are undercut by being somewhat cliched to a modern viewer; in particular I’m thinking of the way Mary falls from grace in a rather stereotypical fashion. This may be a case of retrospectivity acting against the play – in 1924 these themes would likely have felt fresher and more cutting. 

Certainly, I can imagine that at its Dublin debut only a year after the end of the Irish Civil War, the social commentary of Juno and the Paycock would have felt particularly biting – the allusions to the loss of war particularly devastating for an audience only too familiar with it. I’m sure the juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy was deliberate on O’Casey’s part, an attempt to heighten the satire of social structures, the politics of the day and the plight of the Irish working class. But for me the melding of the two didn’t quite sit right. It felt almost like watching two plays – initially a straight-up-and-down comedy, followed by a dark family drama. There wasn’t enough of a through-line for me to understand how these elements were supposed to form part of the same story, and the result was slightly jarring.

It didn’t help that the play has a slightly odd structure. Once when I was small I went to the theatre with my aunt, who told me decidedly that it is a truth universally acknowledged that the second act of a play is shorter than the first. When I sought to check her sources (I was a conscientious child) I was informed “It’s one of those things everyone knows.” Certainly in almost every experience I’ve had at the theatre (and I’ve racked up a few) that rule has remained unbroken. Not so for Juno and the Paycock, whose second act is decidedly longer than the first. Of course, rules are made to be broken and there’s always something to be said for departing from convention, but I do think as an audience member the unusual narrative progression only added to my confusion about the way the story elements were supposed to come together. I’m fairly certain that when the curtain dropped prior to the final scene, and remained down for at least a minute, I wasn’t the only patron thinking the play might have actually already finished. 

I’m sure there’s more context to Juno and the Paycock that a 1924 Dubliner would be keenly aware of, that just doesn’t impact my viewing 100 years later with only a passing understanding of Irish history. (I did read a book about it once, but it was the shortest one I could find on my Kindle . . .) While I could enjoy plenty of both the comedy and tragedy of this play, their unsatisfying combination made it difficult for me to be fully invested.