Juno and the Paycock Tickets
J. Smith-Cameron (Succession) and Mark Rylance star in a huge West End revival of Seán O’Casey's classic Irish tragi-comedy.
Juno and the Paycock Tickets On Sale Now
Tony Award nominee and star of Succession J. Smith-Cameron treads the West End boards in a huge new revival of classic Irish play Juno and the Paycock. Appearing opposite Olivier and Academy Award winner Mark Rylance, Smith-Cameron plays beleaguered but resilient Juno Boyle in Seán O’Casey's timeless masterpiece - a role she last performed in New York in 2014. Don’t miss director Matthew Warchus' (Matilda the Musical) hotly anticipated centenary production, playing at the Gielgud Theatre for a strictly limited season this year.
About Juno and the Paycock
1922, Dublin. The Irish Civil War is tearing the nation apart and in a tiny tenement flat Juno Boyle is trying to make ends meet and keep her family together. Juno has long used sharp wit as a shield and survival tool, and for good reason: her husband, “Captain” Jack Boyle, sets sail for the pub every night. Juno’s luck suddenly seems on the up when news of a great inheritance comes knocking… but will it spell the end of her family’s troubles? Both deeply poignant and sharply funny, Juno and the Paycock is a big-hearted tale of a mother’s stubborn resilience in the face of life’s hardest moments. Hailed an Irish masterpiece, it is one of playwright Seán O’Casey's best-known works, alongside The Plough and the Stars.
J. Smith-Cameron and Mark Rylance in Juno and the Paycock
Emmy Award nominee J. Smith-Cameron stars as put-upon Juno Boyle, a role she last played in New York ten years ago. At the time, New York Times theatre critic Charles Isherwood called it, “one of the finest performances of her distinguished career on the stage.” Smith-Cameron has a long and illustrious stage career, but has in recent years become known as Logan Roy’s right-hand woman Gerri Kellman in Succession. Mark Rylance co-stars as Jack Boyle. He is a hugely popular West End actor, with credits including Jerusalem - for which he won an Olivier Award - and Farinelli and the King. On screen, he is an Oscar winner for his performance as Rudolf Abel in Bridge of Spies.
Don’t Miss Tickets for Juno and the Paycock at Gielgud Theatre
Two of the best stage actors of their generation come together for a magnificent revival of an Irish classic, 100 years after it first wowed audiences. Book Juno and the Paycock tickets and enjoy the return of this tragi-comic triumph.
This production features the smoking of real cigarettes, the use of replica guns and gunfire.
Juno and the Paycock London Reviews
User Reviews
What a masterclass in acting a a genuinely impressive script considering it's actual age, the humour within also continues to hit on all levels. Simple setting with an expansive set used to full potential, at times harrowing where it was required Read more
If you look really carefully, you can see a small, silver crucifix hanging in the centre of the view - that stays there after the curtain is lifted, and for the entire performance. How appropriate for a play set, and originally performed, in Ireland If you look really carefully, you can see a small, silver crucifix hanging in the centre of the view - that stays there after the curtain is lifted, and for the entire performance. How appropriate for a play set, and originally performed, in Ireland in the 1920s - in fact, its first performance was 100 years ago this year. I wonder whether that had anything to do with the decision to stage it. O'Casey is known for writing about the working-class people of Dublin - and sure enough, in this, we meet a working-class family: the father, a former sailor with lots of tall tales, spends his days drinking and avoiding anything that has the reek of work about it; the mother does her best to make ends meet. They have two grown-up children - a son, Johnny, badly wounded during the War of Independence and unable to work, and a daughter, Mary, who is on strike. O'Casey was a member of the working class himself - he suffered from poor eyesight, but taught himself to read by 13, leaving school at 14; the father of the family had died, so his income would have been necessary. He's not known for pulling his punches - and wow, this play lines up some sacred cows for the firing squad! The war, religion, the treatment of women.. the Boyles, and the family at the centre of the story, get punched from all sides. The first half is amusing enough - particularly with an inheritance coming through just at the end, which seems to indicate their problems might all be over. But caveat, it all comes crashing down in the second half. Everything. Mark Rylance, as usual, does a marvellous job of playing a drunkard. It sounded as though the cast were mostly authentic Dubliners - certainly, most are Irish, I discovered on checking. A couple are also known as professional singers - indeed, Mark Rylance himself can hold a tune well, we discovered! And while the darker tone developed toward the latter half of the play mightn't have sat well with everyone - I thought it was a masterful gut-punch to 1920s Ireland. Give O'Casey that, he told it like it was. Read more