Juno and the Paycock – Liverpool Playhouse – 01/10/2014

The whole world's in a terrible state of chaos. 

Sean O’Casey’s 1924 classic is such a rich piece of text that it can be approached from various angles. This new reading doesn’t aim solely for its tragedy, it is more a tale of people that tragedy has already descended upon and who are stoically carrying on as more befalls them. It’s not aiming straight for the comedy either. There are a good deal of laughs, almost farce at times, but we never hear lines played just for the humour alone.

What director Gemma Bodinetz has achieved here is an epic, sweeping piece of human drama that balances light and dark, and tells its story with genuine warmth of affection for the writing.

The setting, a single, squalid Dublin tenement, is placed in an uneasy fractured world in Conor Murphy’s design. The one room dwelling is a skeletal affair beyond which we see into the street beyond, and this is depicted by a chaotic arrangement of discarded objects, as though someone had dismantled the entire barricade from the set of Les Mis and hurled it onto the stage. It rises to a pinnacle at one side and looms heavily over the action, and the cast weave in and out of it as they come and go like as many of the rats they live amongst.

Parts of the ensemble play musical instruments from amidst this wasteland, and those not otherwise occupied perch upon it and cast their inquisitive or accusatory gaze on the story before them like some ghostly chorus.

Niamh Cusack and Des McAleer are the long suffering Juno and her husband Jack, known as the paycock (or peacock) for his vainglorious strutting. Balance is the key again in these two sparring roles and they never allow their characters to become caricatures or excessively sentimental.

Juno slaves away to keep her family afloat, while “Captain” Jack spends his time drinking in the alehouse with his useless bevy of friends. He seems to care little of what his family do or say unless it reflects on his own inflated sense of self-importance. The daughter Mary (Maureen O’Connell) looks for upward mobility in exchanging her original intended for the pompous, ineffectual and apparently incompetent Charles Bentham (wonderfully sculpted by Robin Morrissey), but he leaves her only one unhelpful legacy when he discovers he won’t be marrying into money.

The son Johnny lives with both the physical and mental scars of his past, and some of that past’s shadows ultimately come to haunt him to tragic effect. Johnny is played by Donal Gallery, who brings a tremendous dramatic weight to the character. His last scenes on stage are filled with raw terror.

A wonderful foil to Jack is his drinking partner Joxer Daly, a daarlin’ man who may well be half cut but has plenty of homespun philosophy to offer. Joxer is a splendidly cast Louis Dempsey, who again never lets his larger than life character become purely comic. Aoife McMahon is Maisie Madigan, a neighbour with sage advice but debts owed to her, and her crazed performance has some startling moments (I trust they check that table over regularly). She also cuts quite a vocal dash with some fine singing.

Neil Caple is Needle Nugent, the local tailor who seems accommodating enough until he sees through the Captain and his mounting debt. Mary’s jilted first love Jerry Devine is similarly mild mannered, but there’s fire in him in Fionn Walton’s performance, kindled by both political beliefs and by the discovery that Mary has betrayed him, and his standards, in more ways than he could have imagined possible.

Maggie McCarthy plays Mrs Tancred, a neighbour whose own pain over her son’s fate is a sinister precursor of events to come. Finally, in an ensemble role, is Jonathan Charles, whoalso displays some fine violin playing.

Originally a play in three acts, this production cuts the first interval giving us a opening half that runs for over 90 minutes, but the effect is to maintain the dramatic flow and time stands still. A rapid and dramatic scene change is accompanied by some wild music that would be grand at any céilidh.

Music is used sparingly but to good effect, having a reason to be there whenever it appears but leaving the words their stillness when they need it. Peter Coyte, who has worked on a number of Gemma Bodinetz’s productions, once again provides a score that adopts the sound and atmosphere of the play, using traditional instruments and performance styles to great effect. Members of the cast play one two or even three different instruments, mostly upon the chaotic mountain of debris but occasionally amidst the action, and all accompanied by Fergus O’Hare’s deft sound design.

Lighting by Natasha Chivers is as subtle as the colour palette of the set and costumes enabling moments of visual drama to receive due prominence, including the suspended closing scene.

The world is still in a state of chaos, and this play has resonance with our times in more ways than Sean O’Casey may have imagined ninety years ago. The characters who populate this play have the power to show us that there’s a little of the spirit in us still and Gemma Bodinetz presents us with a paean to the indomitable human spirit.

Juno and the Paycock is a co-production between Liverpool Everyman & Playhouse and Bristol Old Vic. It is the first play in 11 years that Gemma Bodinetz has opened away from her base in the Liverpool theatres, and having already enjoyed a hugely successful run in Bristol it continues at Liverpool Playhouse until 18th October.

Tickets and further information are available here:  http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/

Des McAleer & Niamh Cusack (c) Stephen Vaughan

Hope Place – Liverpool Everyman – 09/05/2014

We were fine until he came along. With his history this and history that.

Note: As this posting was written following the first preview of this new play, some scenes referred to may have subseqeuntly changed.

The first thing that strikes you as you walk into the Everyman auditorium is Peter McKintosh’s immense set. Every square inch of the stage floor and the walls covered in detail and the frontage of a Georgian house to the rear, reaching upward out of sight behind the technical grid. Before the opening much of what is on the forestage is partially obscured by projection effects but scene by scene we find that the house is effectively turned inside out on itself, so that we can see a series of interiors as well as the comings and goings in the street.

While much of the action takes place in the basement kitchen of number 8 Hope Place and in the street outside, other scenes take us round the corner to the very spot on which the present Everyman Theatre stands and it is here that the play begins in the year 1699. While the main characters are living in the present day, intermittent flashbacks evoke memories – both theirs and those of others – and it is this sense of a shared history that holds the story together.

Maggie lives alone in the house, her family having moved away. None of them far, but they’ve all gone off and had lives while she has stayed home to care for her parents until they had both gone. But families usually come together for a funeral and it’s their mother’s that brings Maggie’s sister Veronica, her brothers Eric and Jack and her niece Josie back to Hope Place.

Along with Josie is her new boyfriend Simon, the posh one from Birkenhead, and he decides that as this family have lived for generations in the same house they’ll provide a rich source of material for his PhD thesis, which is to be based on oral history. This is the simple premise for unfolding the lives and memories of the characters and blending them with the history of the locality. A portrait of ordinary local people of Liverpool and the Hope Street area they live in. How could anything have been more appropriate for a first new commission for the new Everyman?

Delving into the past often wakes up its ghosts and soon we’re aware of the secrets and lies that lie in the family’s history. Rage, reverie, resentment and reconciliation follow in the next couple of hours as the tales of the past are told. Sometimes the truth blurs with oft told stories and reality is hard to pin down.

Hugely effective are passages where children appear playing out the adult’s memories. There is a double cast of children in these roles who are alternating performances, and the team on stage for yesterday’s first night were superb.

Along the way, through Simon’s interviews for his thesis, we meet other local residents - a bar owner, an incomer from London a sex worker, and we also catch glimpses of residents from the past as we drift back and forth through the decades.

This play is both poignant and witty. It has a great sense of structure too – with a conclusion that feels as though we’ve reached a safe place to stop on the ongoing journey. There are no tidy endings but there is a resolution. Michael Wynne has succeeded in celebrating the locality, its past, its present and its people, without ever losing sight of what a play needs for longevity.

Lighting and sound design from Tim Lutkin and Fergus O’Hare, with music by Isobel Waller-Bridge, create the atmosphere on set and the slick scene transitions.

Director Rachel Kavanaugh has assembled a great cast, many of them familiar local faces. Neil Caple and Joe McGann play brothers Eric and Jack and Tricia Kelly their sister Veronica. Josie is played by Emma Lisi and her boyfriend Simon by Ciaran Kellgren. Michelle Butterly not only evokes the ghost of the mother but also performs six other characters including a music hall singer who opens the second act. Alan Stocks also has seven characters, from a 17th century farmer to the family’s late father. On Friday evening Freya Barnes, Rumah Norton, Harry Turpin and Sam Vaughan played the children’s roles, while on other nights they alternate with Julia Carlyle, Kaitlyn Hogg, Frank Turpin and George Turpin.

I have left one person till last because, while the entire cast are excellent, it is Eileen O’Brien’s tremendous performance as Maggie that really stands out for the huge range of emotion that she finds in her multifaceted character.

Hats off to the cast and creative team of Hope Place for scoring another bull’s-eye for the Everyman.

I saw the first preview performance yesterday and Hope Place plays Liverpool Everyman until Saturday 31st May – full details available at www.everymanplayhouse.com or click here

Author and Director were in the house gauging audience reaction and scribbling notes, so some scenes may be modified.

Artwork by Bolland & Lowe for production publicity and playtext