J. Smith-Cameron
What Sean O’Casey’s political
tragicomedy “Juno and the Paycock” lacks in plot, it makes up for in
characterization. And in the splendid production directed by Charlotte Moore for
the Irish Repertory Theatre, characterization gets its due. O’Casey (“Shadow of
a Gunman,” and “The Plow and the Stars”) wrote this riveting ferociously
subversive play in 1924 eight years after the Easter Rising of 1916, and only
two years after the terrible Civil War. He labeled it rightly “a tragedy.” That
may be true enough, but the bracing lyrical humor of its lowly Irish folk is
expressed on such a high and impressively theatrical plane that it serves to
empower rather than to defuse their disconsolate lives and the tragedies that
befall them
The story of a chaotic family
that misguidedly lives on credit in the false belief they have come into an
inheritance is a doozy. In this production, there is no lack of the full flavor
of the Irishness that so richly pervades and energizes all the productions
given by this theatre company. Given designer James Noone’s dingy setting, David
Towser’s dowdy costumes, and Brian Nason’s dreary lighting) the actors, both
principals and peripheral players, admirably mine O’Casey’s poetic text poetry
even in the midst of the play’s abject realism. J. Smith Cameron’s tough-love
performance as the razor-sharp wife and mother of an impoverished Dublin family is riveting. Cameron, a superb actor who has been
receiving acclaim for the past couple of seasons acting in Richard Nelson’s
series of “Apple Family” plays at the Public Theatre, is making her Irish
Repertory Theatre debut. She has winningly framed Juno’s passionately Catholic
instincts with the stirring and heroic sobriety of her pagan goddess namesake.
Ciaran O’Reilly is wonderfully
blustery as the ale-bloated, blarney-spouting Captain Jack Boyle, the
“Paycock,” who, citing the questionable pains in his legs as an excuse refuses
to look for work even when it falls into his lap. As Joxer Daly, the Captain’s
drinking partner, John Keating doesn’t hide behind the duplicity of fragile
relationships, as he polishes off more than poetic quotations and
half-remembered songs. Ed Malone gives a poignant portrayal of the wounded son
Johnny, who suffers from nightmares and hallucinations, but who has more to
worry about when his allegiance to the Irish Republican Brotherhood is
questioned. Mary Mallen affixes a sincere countenance and a plaintive courage
to the role of the Mary, the family’s main provider and a member of the
currently striking union.
Spurning her ardent wooer
Jerry Devine (sensitively acted by David O’Hara), Mary is seduced and abandoned
by Charlie Bentham, a school-teacher and lawyer (slickly played by James
Russell), who brings the news of Jack’s inheritance, and without warning leaves
town when the windfall falls through.
The play has its melodramatic
digressions, such as the extended scene in which the mourning Mrs. Tancred, as
wrenchingly played by Fiana Toibin, details the murder of her activist son to
the Boyle family while on the way to the funeral. The somber tone is well timed
to put a damper on an impromptu songfest in which the Boyle’s and their
obstreperous neighbor Maisie Madigan (Terry Donnelly) display their vocal virtuosity.
But it remains for the virtuosity of O’Casey’s writing to take us from
boisterous comedy to dispiriting situations to tragic results, and yet leave us
with a sense of the heroic. This is in the person of Juno, who, unlike her
loafer-of-a-husband, who sees “the whole world in a state o chassis!” (a
corruption of the word chaos), is indomitable and a survivor.
“Juno and the Paycock”
(through December 8, 2013
132 W. 22nd Street
For tickets ($55.00 - $65.00)
call 212-727-2737
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