The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey, and :Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey, and:The Plough and the Stars by Sean O’Casey

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey, and :Juno and the Paycock by Sean O’Casey, and:The Plough and the Stars by Sean O’Casey Michael C. O’neill THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN. By Sean O’Casey. Directed by Ciarán O’Reilly. Irish Repertory Theatre, New York City. January 31, 2019. JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK. By Sean O’Casey. Directed by Neil Pepe. Irish Repertory Theatre, New York City. March 21, 2019. THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS. By Sean O’Casey. Directed by Charlotte Moore. Irish Repertory Theatre, New York City. June 20, 2019. New York City’s Irish Repertory Theatre celebrated its thirtieth anniversary by devoting the second half of its 2018–19 season to Sean O’Casey, [End Page 107] staging his so-called “Dublin Trilogy” in repertory at the Irish Rep’s intimate space on West 22nd Street. Marking the first time in the New York area that The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926) have been performed in repertory, the productions captured the comic energy and relentless suffering of O’Casey’s characters, connecting contemporary audiences to the domestic turmoil and political upheaval that permeates these plays first staged by Dublin’s Abbey Theatre almost a century ago. An audacious undertaking by any measure, the Irish Rep’s productions maintained O’Casey’s legacy without challenging it, and instead embraced the novice playwright’s passions and developing ideas. This method allowed audiences a sense of how O’Casey’s early work, particularly his strong portraits of selfless, sometimes heroic women helped revolutionize theatre in Ireland and beyond. Click for larger view View full resolution James Russell (Donal Davoren) and Michael Mellamphy (Seumas Shields) in The Shadow of a Gunman. (Photo: Carol Rosegg.) Set in 1920 during the Irish War for Independence, The Shadow of a Gunman, under the direction of Ciarán O’Reilly, immediately thrust the audience into a confusing Dublin tenement flat governed by the guarded behavior and puzzling innuendo of the peddler Seumas Shields and his illegal tenant, the hapless poet Donal Davoren, who, according to tenement gossip, is secretly an IRA gunman. Although the acting ensemble provided vivid portraits of the nosey tenement dwellers, O’Reilly’s direction did little to help the audience distinguish them from one another; moreover, James Russell as Davoren complained so strongly when the neighbors interrupted his writing that he may have made it difficult for the audience to understand these denizens of an unfamiliar era as more than merely part of O’Casey’s microcosm of Dublin’s impoverished working class. O’Casey pokes fun at would-be poets, including his own youthful artistic pretensions, through Davoren, but Russell seemed to equate passion with yelling and never captured the modulation in the wonderful lines O’Casey has written for Davoren. Russell’s Davoren, however, stirred briefly to life in his first act encounter with Minnie Powell, played by Meg Hennessy as a potential “new woman” deprived by her lack of education from taking her place in a culture redefining itself. She imposed upon a receptive Davoren her simple preconceptions of a heroic ethos embodied by soldiers fighting against Britain. In feigning to share her revolutionary fervor, the duplicitous Davoren by the close of The Shadow of a Gunman ironically became a foil to Minnie, whose accidental death was quickly mythologized by tenement gossip as an act of heroism; meanwhile, in one of the production’s most genuine moments, Seumas [End Page 108] and Davoren realized their debt to Minnie for saving their lives must remain a secret they keep forever. Presented at the Irish Rep in 1995 and 2014, Juno and the Paycock remains O’Casey’s most popular play, and in terms of theatrical artistry, it is far more accomplished than The Shadow of a Gunman. The Atlantic Theatre Company’s artistic director, Neil Pepe, directed the production without much evidence of his customary visceral approach, reflecting instead the Irish Rep’s steady and unobtrusive directorial aesthetic. Pepe appropriately contrasted the mundane troubles of the Boyle family in 1924, however, against the insufferable loss of children to...