Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and is highly regarded and often performed in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924. It is set in the working class tenements of Dublin in the early 1920s, during the Irish Civil War period.

It is the second of his "Dublin Trilogy" – the other two being The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and The Plough and the Stars (1926).

Plot

Act I

Juno and the Paycock (film)

Juno and the Paycock is a 1930 film written and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Barry Fitzgerald, Maire O'Neill, Edward Chapman and Sara Allgood.

The film was based on the successful play of the same the name by Sean O'Casey.

Plot

Barry Fitzgerald, who played Captain Jack Boyle in the original stage production, appears as an orator in the first scene, but has no other role. In the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War, Captain Boyle (Edward Chapman) lives in a two-room tenement flat with his wife Juno (Sara Allgood) and their two young children Mary (Kathleen O'Regan) and Johnny (John Laurie). Juno has dubbed her husband "the Paycock" because she thinks him as useful and vain as a peacock. Juno works while the Captain loafs around the flat when not drinking up the family's meager finances at the neighbourhood pub.

Daughter Mary has a job but is on strike against the victimisation of a co-worker. Son Johnny has become a semi invalid after losing an arm and severely injuring his hip in a fight with the Black and Tans during the Irish War of Independence. Although Johnny has taken the Anti-Treaty side during the continuing Irish Civil War, he has recently turned in a fellow Irish Republican Army (IRA) member to the Irish Free State police who subsequently kill him. The Paycock tells his friend Joxer (Sidney Morgan) of his disgust at the informer, unaware that his son was responsible. The IRA suspect Johnny and order him to report to them for questioning; he refuses, protesting that his wounds show he has done his bit for Ireland.