Gielgud Theatre
One To Avoid?
The 100th anniversary of Sean O’Casey’s tragicomedy turned into more of a wake than a celebration as critic after critic laid into the production. If the producers hoped a barnstorming performance from Mark Rylance would carry the day, they will have been disappointed. Even critics who liked his over-the-top acting weren’t sure whether it worked in the context of the production. Many weren’t convinced that the production itself had got the balance right between comedy and tragedy. With no less than four 2 star reviews from leading critics, Juno and the Paycock has one of the worst average ratings and value ratings of the year so far.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Time Out’s Andrzej Luwoski (4★) was lone in giving four stars and almost alone in loving Mark Rylance’s performance: ‘Rylance has gone full vaudevillian… he rocks a toothbrush moustache, a penchant for dazzling extremes of physical business, and a tendency to directly address the audience or look bewildered out of the corners of his eyes as if he can’t work out why he’s trapped in a play. For the first half he’s so dazzlingly strange and doing so much more than anyone else – much of it inscrutable – that it’s hard to focus on the other actors. I found it brilliantly, bizarrely funny, the sort of auteur performance that no other actor alive would so much as think of giving.’ He was right to say, ‘I suspect reviews will be divided on whether it makes any sense in the wider context of the production.’ He added emphatically, ‘But you know, if somebody offered me a Picasso I wouldn’t fret that it didn’t go with the furniture.’
Marianka Swain of LondonTheatre (3★) took a similar view‘ of Mark Rylance’s performance. Aided by his Charlie Chaplin moustache, he relishes the vaudevillian aspects of O’Casey’s work’…’However, Rylance is operating in a completely different register to the rest of the cast, who, while also alert to the work’s humour, offer much more grounded naturalism. That means he frequently pulls focus unnecessarily in a scene with his clowning, and undermines some of the darker material.’
Alice Saville in The Independent (3★) was disappointed that the play’s ‘deep sense of injustice and pain doesn’t get space to breathe here,’ but felt its male star saved it: ‘Rylance’s charisma knits together a production that’s full of roustabout hilarity and poignancy mingled together, bright and bleak at once.’
The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (3★) said, ‘Smith-Cameron really is the heart and soul of this production, for all of Rylance’s charisma … when the tone flips to tragedy, Smith-Cameron is tremendous.’ She commented, ‘Beneath the bonhomie are O’Casey’s poetry, and the family’s craving to be somewhere they are not known, but this production does not dwell too long on these.’
Nick Curtis in The Standard (3★) had this to say about the stars: ‘Succession star J. Smith-Cameron is splendid in it as tenement matriarch Juno’ but ‘Mark Rylance … sadly continues his recent slide into mannered self-parody’. He didn’t think the play had aged well: ‘Today its juxtaposition of broad humour with sectarian violence and poverty jars, as do the thick-as-stout accents.’ As for the production, ‘Director Matthew Warchus accentuates the strangeness by giving his production the veneer of a black-and-white slapstick film, the cast in white pancake makeup and kohl-rimmed eyes.’
Heather Neill at TheArtsDesk (3★) disapproved of the treatment: ‘This is an unusual revival, giving both the comedy and tragedy full scope, but in the final scene it topples off balance into melodrama and becomes a different play altogether.’
Ssrah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (2★) called it ‘a horrible melange. Everyone on stage seems to be performing in a different version of the play, there is no chemistry, little sense of purpose.’
Dave Fargnoli in The Stage (2★) went further: ‘this turgid production from director Matthew Warchus never quite succeeds in capturing the author’s deep anger or extraordinary compassion.’ He gained some pleasure from the cast: ’Mark Rylance provides a riveting focal point as alcoholic, tall-tale-telling ‘Captain’ Jack Boyle. In a wholly committed performance, he stutters and slurs his lines, searching for words through a haze of drink and shame.’
The Times’ Clive Davis (2★) was critical of Mark Rylance. ‘His version of the feckless Captain Jack is a leering, gurning loafer who bears more than a passing resemblance to Charlie Chaplin’s tramp…It’s weirdly laboured, and makes the play’s sudden transition from high jinks to grim melodrama all the harder to take.’
Clare Allfree in the Telegraph (2★) was not impressed by either of its stars: ‘Rylance doesn’t shrink from Boyle’s essential helplessness but his confected, overly self-regarding performance lacks the requisite humanity to make us care.’ Of J. Smith-Cameron, she said, ‘she imbues Juno with a flinty pragmatism. Yet her exasperation with her obnoxious husband rarely tips into the necessary desperation. Even in the final scene, having lost almost everything, she maintains a monotone stoicism. The play demands more.’ Her conclusion? ‘O’Casey’s desolate play should force us into a reckoning with its characters’ contradictions. In this ultimately underwhelming production, one that’s far too in thrall to its star casting, there is not enough room for such complexity.’
Critics’ Average Rating 2.7★
Value rating 29 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)
Juno and the Paycock can be seen at the Gielgud Theatre until 23 November 2024 Buy tickets direct here
If you’ve seen Juno and the Paycock at the Gielgud Theatre, please add your review and rating below
I thought the production significantly better than some of these reviews suggest. The play is a century old, and several of the objections here are to the play itself, not the production. My guess is a 1924 audience would have felt at home. Even as a 1924 play I don’t think the play is perfectly balanced. It’s a significant enough play to be worth reviving (if nothing else so that audiences can see it, rather than relying on reading it or watching the 1935 film), and this production does a fair job of it.
It is not the play at fault here. I have only read the play, and this was my first time seeing it. They CHANGED THE ENDING the night I saw it – they produced a gun and shot a character that does not die in the play-text; not just undermining theatre itself, but the final words of the play, which O’Casey was careful to give to the women. This play is comic, real and sad – but slapstick it is not, and it was played as such. Did they have nothing else to offer? Maybe, because the lack of Dublin accents suggests they didn’t have enough knowledge in the creative team to understand the place, the politics, the deep dynamics, the humour. The white make-up and the breaking of the fourth wall was a cover-up of this lack of understanding. There were some saving graces – one of these was the timeless anti-war message, and the portrayal of domestic survival while under siege, which still felt current after all these years, partly because of worldwide events. I am sorry, O’Casey.
I was in the audience on Monday 21st October and left bitterly disappointed by a performance which lacked any depth, drama or intelligent meaning. Rylance was chiefly to blame for his Chaplinesque portrayal of the true villain of the piece as an amusing , hen pecked drunk . He played almost the entire performance for laughs and the invented ending was an insult and finally wrecked any meaning the play possibly could have had. My most disappointing outing to the West End in a long time.
None of the reviews see this as a feminist play. This is worth thinking about. All the men are failures and in the end it is Mother and daughter who will be able to make a life for themselves. There was no need to change the ending; rather leave it with the voice of Juno. I found the play profoundly moving with reference to the tragedies playing out in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Four stars.
A horrible interpretation. The funny and pathetic character of Captain Boyle over played with unnecessary slapstick was the main failure which disjointed the comedy of this play from its essential tragedy and offer of hope and resilience. All of the plays other motifs suffer from this disjoint and the diminution of other roles which are sacrificed for an exaggerated interpretation of Boyles comedy. The changed ending detracts from the essential strength of Juno’s closing words and actions and Boyle’s lonely and pitiful ending. A disappointing evening.
I was not aware of this play before seeing it last night, but I was anticipating something of a tragi-comedy strongly underpinned by the struggles in 1920s Ireland. The very first impression was that the evening was going to be a problem – couldn’t hear the cast! Whether they were not projecting, inadequately miked, overplaying the accents or my hearing is no longer up to the live theatre, I wasn’t getting more than 60% of the dialogue. Things did improve, which might suggest that a problem was recognised, but the voices of the actors must be heard!
Whether the original portrayal of a permanently drunken Irishman was seen as comedic, authentic or anything else when debuted in Dublin is hard to tell, but I can’t help but think that in London a hundred years on it propagates an unhelpful and (mostly) untruthful picture. Add in the unfortunate veering towards slapstick comedy by Rylance and the underlying subplot about the free state is practically lost.
All in all, a play where the potential for it to have been done better is clear to see.
I was a little surprised by the focus on slapstick but I could interpret this as a timeless problem of the drunken spouse amid searing poverty and sectarian violence. However, what did disappoint me was my own difficulty in hearing what was being said. I am aware my own hearing is no longer as sharp. That said, there were characters I could understand. Neither my husband or I could understand 50% of what Juno delivered, nor indeed her drunken husband. Perhaps to imitate regional accents, greater articulation and more voice projection should be considered. Yes, we were in the Dress Circle, but I had hoped to be able to follow the dialogue. Indeed, that is why I normally choose serious theatre over musicals
I found it a deeply insulting lazy production by an English director who clearly had no regard or respect for the characters. As an Irish actor myself, I am sorry to report that the director remarked to a fellow contemporary, that the characters are stupid/uneducated, and his treatment of the play and subject shows his disregard. It was a desperately caricatured production, even the set felt cartoonish and I can see they were aiming for vaudeville but it didn’t work as a device , apart from when Captain Jack broke the 4th wall in his drunken world and mind. I thought the set reveal at end worked nicely for Junos moving and all too politically relevant end speech but of course they had to undermine this with the strange afterthought and ridiculous shooting of Joxer. There were laughs to be had but it lacked any of the depth and humanity and complexity and pain that the script offers. Druid have done it lately- in better hands. And the most exquisite production I ever saw was 2010 at the Abbey theatre with Ciaran Hinds as Captain Boyle, it’s seared into my memory. This will be seared in for entirely the wrong reasons.
Ah! Eamon, the Irish actor! The curator of your heritage! What a shame to regard a genuine attempt to entertain and interpret, as lazy or indeed insulting. I fear that is indeed life imitating the art
While Mark Rylance was hugely entertaining in the Matthew Warchus’ production of Juno, I felt that the focus on the character of Captain Jack ultimately undermined and downplayed the wider political issues of the play. O’Casey was a champion of women’s rights. Living with his mother in a Dublin tenement in such volatile times, he understood only too well the political turmoil and the plight of women in the suffocating grip of the Catholic Church amid the challenges of a newly independent state. Jack can’t govern himself any more than Ireland can govern itself. Instead he is all talk, all show.
Matters come to a head in the shocking scene where Jack explodes into a violent fury at the ‘shame and disgrace’ his daughter has brought upon the family by becoming pregnant. The ultimate ‘shame and disgrace’ however, is not Mary’s pregnancy but Jack’s inability to be master of his own destiny and provide for his family, steering them instead into abject poverty. Juno goes against the traditional values of the church , abandoning her husband and sticking by her daughter and the new life she represents. This becomes a metaphor for Ireland as the newly found state grapples with all the challenges of Independence and the traditional place of religion in that world.
It has been said that Oscar Wilde as an Irishman ‘out Englished’ the English in his satire of social manners. So too does Mark Rylance, in this production ‘out Irish’ the Irish, parodying the familiar cultural trope of the feckless drunken Irishman. While the comedic value is high, there were many missed opportunities for a deeper understanding of the political and psychological forces at work..