JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK
The triumph is the greater because this uncompromising play has an immense capacity to enrage and depress. It’s easy to imagine riots breaking out today over Juno and the Paycock, as they did over O’Casey plays decades ago. This playwright relentlessly exposes his fellow Irishmen (with emphasis on “men”)–their penchant for phony sentiment and religious rigidity, their lazy love of bluster and beer, and the wasteful way they worship the martyred dead and ignore the needy living. This tragicomedy has an operatic range. The second act, with its promise of sudden wealth, veers from raucous comedy to trenchant suffering to acidic satire, and each shift is exactly right.
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Brendan Gleeson captures Jack Boyle’s garrulous blarney yet never forfeits his humanity, and John Kavanagh both enjoys and exploits foxy Joxer’s smarmy venality; whether these two are slurping their stout or dissolving in operatic self-pity, their exchanges are vaudeville-sharp. Tom Murphy as Johnny recalls every partisan who ever refused to confront the pointlessness of his sacrifices; as his sister, Antoine Byrne breaks your heart eight ways.
