These are poor people in “the Boyle family’s two-roomed flat in a tenement house in Dublin,1922” and at the outset of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, Marla McLean as daughter Mary spiffs up her shoes with her bare hand. Mary Haney as wife Juno erupts in frustration at Jim Mezon’s Captain Jack who shows disinclination to do any labour for the family’s daily bread.
Son Johnny played by Johnny Gallant broods about with one arm and Jack’s pal Joxer played by Benedict Campbell lurks about for another drink preferably bought by someone else. If you have had any exposure to the devastating effects of alcoholism, you feel a chill at Jack’s and Joxer’s reliance on the booze and how it consumes them.
Still, gift of gab is a way of life in this openly communal world where lives overlap and salesmen don’t knock but simply open the door and inquire if there is any interest in their wares. There is also a respectful, even fawning, attitude to those who are educated, especially if they are potential suitors or, germane to the play, they bring news of a will that dumps unexpected wealth on the family.
In anticipation of the will’s solving all problems, it, still unseen, pays for furniture of much better quality and Captain Jack, never remotely near being a captain, becomes an even boastful non-entity, full of pretention and of fecal substance. Johnny, meanwhile, broods in hurt and misery, a “very touchy” and “tormented” fellow. If this is a life of poverty held together by a worn and resolute Juno, it also pulsates with Irish civil hatred and thus Mrs. Tancred’s son is found “riddled with bullets” although Jack states “these tings don’t affect us.”
In the end, tragedies prove devastating in this family, for one as both father and son as cruelly unforgiving of the pregnant Mary. “If Mary goes I go with her,” says Juno. “Well go,” says Jack who cares more how people will gossip about him than about his daughter’s humiliation. “The last few friends I have” to whom Jack refers are his drinking buddies, especially the sycophantic and opportunistic Joxer played pitch perfect by Benedict Campbell
Sean O’Casey’s play, although textured with the way poor people live just above sinking, devotes much time to a “keep song and dance going” attitude among these folks. It is a world where men take no responsibility and brutally blame their women. Even Jerry, poignantly played by Andrey Bunker, whose love for Mary has been constant and apparently deep, backs away in the face of her pregnancy. Meanwhile, it is said of Johnny, in reference to Mrs. Tancred’s son, that he “gave him away and sent him to his grave” and now faces an unforgiving justice for traitors. “Are men only drunks, protected, or killed?” asks Juno.
Director Jackie Maxwell, Irish born, opts for our slight distance from pain here, so, while feeling the accumulating wounds of these people, we can also weigh what their impact is in human and societal terms. Mary’s realization of her devastating shame is deeply sad yet to her “It’s my poor child must have a father” Mary Haney’s Juno, with a feisty feminist potency, responds “it will have two mothers.” If there is any element of hope in this patriarchal mess, we find it here.
Mary Haney does a very moving take on Juno. We can see in her resolute face that she has achieved a scarred nobility, albeit unnoticeable to others and unappreciated by them. Yet, against unconquerable odds, she tries to keep her family afloat. This is a penetrating and subtly-tuned production that, thanks to Maxwell’s direction and the cast’s spot-on portrayals, gives us some understanding of the cruel humanity that kills, betrays, shames and torments its kind, all with mercy spoken by only a few voices and by even fewer deeds.