Sean O’Casey’s classic drama was first staged in Dublin in 1924. It had been written two years earlier when civil war was raging in Ireland. A hundred years on, Juno and The Paycock has become a staple of Irish theater, but is less frequently performed elsewhere. I have seen it on two or three occasions, once in London for sure decades ago and once in New York City more recently. It is a challenging piece to stage. In the wrong hands, the comedic parts can easily descend into caricature, the tragic parts can look maudlin, and the whole can come off as sentimental. When I learned that one of my favorite actors, Mark Rylance, was taking on a leading part in the play in a West End staging, I was keen to get a ticket but also a little apprehensive. O’Casey’s plays explore universal themes, but they are very explicitly Irish. How would decision to cast all three of the main parts to two English actors and one American play out?

It proved to be a problem (none of them could sustain a reliable or authentic Dublin accent throughout the performance I saw), but not the most serious problem. Act 1 was played for laughs, with Rylance (Captain Boyle) made up to look like Charlie Chaplin and hamming it up at every opportunity he was given. The audience loved the Vaudeville-style brilliance, but as the drama turned towards darkness and tragedy it proved impossible to pull it back from the brink of farce. The terrible sadness at the heart of Juno and The Paycock was never shown because the early humor proved too hard to resist and rein in.

It is a play about the places we find meaning, consolation, and redemption. Religion for some, politics for others, not to mention the distractions of alcohol and romance. For Juno, family is everything. Her tragedy is to be the only one in her family to realize that.