BOOK REVIEW
THREE PLAYS: JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK, THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN’ THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS, SEAN O’CASY, ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, NEW YORK, 1981
The history of Ireland is replete with ‘times of troubles’, no question about that. The particular ‘ time of troubles’ that the master Anglo- Irish socialist playwright Sean O’Casey takes on in these three classic and best known of his plays is the time from the Easter Uprising in 1916 to the time of the lesser known Civil War battles between Free Staters and die-hard Republicans in 1921-22. Needless to say they were all classified as tragedies by O’Casey. What qualified O’Casey to do much more than provide yeoman’s cultural service to this period? Well, for one he helped organize the famous James Connolly-led Irish Citizen’s Army that took part in the heroic Easter Uprising in 1916. For another, O’Casey was a true son of the Dublin tenements where the action of the three plays takes place. He KNEW the ‘shawlie’ environment and the language of despair, duplicity and treachery that is the lot of the desperately poor. Finally, as an Anglo- Irishman he had that very fine ear for the English language that we have come to cherish from the long line of Irish poets and playwrights who have graced our culture. That said, please read about this period in Irish history but also please read these plays if you want to put that history in proper perspective- in short, to understand why the hell the British had to go. Below are capsule summaries of the three plays.
Juno and the Paycock- the Boyles, the central characters in this play, have benefited from the creation of the Free State but at a cost, namely the incapacity of their son. Their daughter has seemingly better prospects, but that will remain to be seen. The device that holds this play together is the hope of good fortune that allegedly is coming under the terms of a relative of Captain Boyle’s will. The ebb and flow of events around that fortune drives the drama as does the fickleness of the tenement crowd who gather to ‘benefit’ from it. There is also a very lively and, from this distance, seemingly stereotyped camaraderie between the Captain and his ‘boyo’ Joxer.
The Shadow of a Gunman- the gun has always played, and continues to play, an important part in the Irish liberation struggle. That premise was no different in 1920 than it is today. Whether the gun alone, in the absence of a socialist political program, can create the Workers Republic that O’Casey strove for is a separate question. What is interesting here is what happens, literally, when by mistake and misdirection, a couple of free-floating Irish males of indeterminate character and politics are assumed to be gunmen but are not. It is not giving anything in the play away to state that the real heroine of this action is a woman, Minnie, who in her own patriotic republican way takes the situation as good coin. The Minnies of this world may not lead the revolution but you sure as hell cannot have one without them (and their preparedness to sacrifice).
The Plough and the Stars- There was a time when to even say the words 'plough and stars' brought a little tear to this reviewer’s eye. Well he is a big boy now but the question posed here between duty to the liberation struggle in 1916 and its consequences on the one hand and, for lack of a better word, romance on the other is still one to br reckoned with. That it had such tragic consequences for the young tenement couple Jack and Nora only underlines the problem of love and war in real life, as on the stage.
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