Juno and the Paycock

Summary

1951 live BBC studio production of Juno and the Paycock by Seán O’Casey.

Theatre play

Juno and the Paycock by Seán O’Casey (1880-1964) [more information]

Play synopsis

Set in the working-class tenements of Dublin in the early 1920s, during the Irish Civil War period. It is the second of Casey’s well known Dublin Trilogy, the other two being The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and The Plough and the Stars (1926). A distant relative of the Boyle family dies, ‘and an English solicitor, Mr Bentham, brings news that the family has come into an inheritance. The family buys goods on credit, and borrows money from neighbours with the intent of paying them back when the fortune arrives’. The fortune doesn’t arrive, however, and the goods have to be returned; the son is killed for betraying an IRA comrade; mother Juno and daughter Mary (who has fallen pregnant by Bentham) leave the family home; and father returns drunk, not knowing that the house will be empty on his return.

Production history

First staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924.

Date of transmission

Sunday 13 May 1951

Time

8.15-10.25pm

Channel

BBC Television

Production company

BBC

Credits

Producer

Eric Fawcett

Playwright

Seán O’Casey (1880-1964)

Sets / Settings

James Bould

Cast

Cecil Brock	First Irregular
Brian Carey	Johnny Boyle
John Cowley	Second Irregular
Halston Crimmins	Furniture Removal Man
Anne D’Alton	Neighbour
Betty Henderson	Mrs Maisie Madigan
T. Leslie Jackson	Sewing-machine Man
John Kelly	Captain Jack Boyle
E. J. Kennedy	Coal-block Vendor
Robert [Bob] Mooney	The Mobiliser
Bartlett Mullins	'Needle’ Nugent
Ethel O’Shea	Mrs Tancred
Tony Quinn	'Joxer’ Daly
Maureen Toal	Mary Boyle
Harry Towb	Jerry Devine
Shela Ward	Juno Boyle

Additional details

Origination

Live from studio

Vision original

Monochrome

Later transmissions

Presented again at 8.15pm on Thursday 17 May 1951.

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

IRA (Irish Republican Army); Irish drama; Republic of Ireland, as theme or setting

Print sources

Title

Radio Times, 11 May 1951 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing, p. 41 and article by Lionel Hale, ‘A Tragi-comedy of Dublin’, p. 39