Juno and the Paycock Reviews Round-up – Starring Mark Rylance & J Smith Cameron

"Mark Rylance is at his most divisively virtuosic in this revival of Sean O’Casey’s classic play"

"Just when you think Mark Rylance had Mark Rylance-d all he can, the man finds whole new ways to Mark Rylance. I’d be intrigued to know what Succession star J Smith-Cameron was expecting when she signed on to play the eponymous hard bitten wife and mother in Sean O’Casey’s classic 1924 drama set in the tenements of Civil War Dublin. Was she entirely clear about the extent to which human special effect Rylance would upstage her and, indeed, everyone else?"

"For the first half he’s so dazzlingly strange and doing so much more than anyone else – much of it inscrutable – that it’s hard to focus on the other actors. I found it brilliantly, bizarrely funny, the sort of auteur performance that no other actor alive would so much as think of giving."

"And while showman director Warchus is perhaps not able to articulate this perfectly, Rylance’s turn does make sense in the context of the devastating change of tack O’Casey’s play makes late on."

"... up against Rylance’s showy weirdness they’re simply not on an equal footing, the Spiders from Mars to his Ziggy Stardust. But that changes as things get darker, and Smith-Cameron in particular finally gets her moment with a biblical late monologue."

"Mark Rylance goes to fabulous extremes in an enjoyable if unbalanced revival of O’Casey’s Irish civil war drama"

"In this enjoyable Gielgud staging, director Matthew Warchus, in particular, still doesn’t seem to know quite what to make of Johnny Boyle, or how to handle his subplot. That storyline comes and goes here, but you never really believe in it."

"The thoughtful disjunction of tone in O’Casey’s play is instead exaggerated, and unbalanced, by the fabulous extremes of Mark Rylance’s performance in the role of the “Captain”, into which he pours elements of Jerusalem’s Rooster Byron, and in which not only his moustache is Chaplinesque."

"You don’t begrudge him that attention – who wouldn’t want to spend the evening watching Rylance in full spate? – but you feel a little for those actors sharing a stage with him, and for those characters sharing a life with him. His wife, Juno, inhabited here with a certain stout resolve by J Smith-Cameron (of Succession fame), seems to have run out of ways to counter her husband long before the drama begins, and looks increasingly weighed down by the looming tenement facade of Rob Howell’s set."

"Mark Rylance delights as a drunken fantasist Dubliner"

"Rylance is entertainingly Chaplinesque as a dissolute husband in Seán O’Casey’s 1924 tragicomedy, but Succession’s J Smith-Cameron is its heart and soul as the long-suffering wife"

"A volley of gunshots at the start signifies the violent backdrop to Seán O’Casey’s 1924 tragicomedy, which takes place during the Irish civil war of 1922-23. But it is a distant sound, and musical hall-style comedy and drunken shenanigans take prominence in this production."

"Director Matthew Warchus has gathered a talented cast, from Smith-Cameron as a formidably watchable presence to Rylance as her peacocking husband. They are never less than entertaining but the show does not stretch them, and the drama of the first two acts is a little too ambling and creaky, with the broad Irish accents and comic dissolution."

"Smith-Cameron really is the heart and soul of this production, for all of Rylance’s charisma. Juno is the foil to Jack’s clownishness and when the tone flips to tragedy, Smith-Cameron is tremendous. Kearns does wonders with her part as Mary too, although Johnny feels rather insignificant."

"When the plot turns dark, the stage cracks open to an expressionistic setting and it is a magnificent moment. The tragedy feels late but it is impressive in the impact of its turning point."

"Succession star J. Smith-Cameron is splendid"

"Despite the actress’s great performance, Sean O’Casey’s tragicomedy has dated badly and the production plays it strangely like a black-and-white slapstick film"

"First things first: Sean O’Casey’s tragicomedy set in civil war-torn Dublin in 1922 has dated badly; Succession star J. Smith-Cameron is splendid in it as tenement matriarch Juno; Mark Rylance, a quicksilver but collegiate actor at his excellent best, sadly continues his recent slide into mannered self-parody as Juno’s feckless husband ‘Captain’ Jack Boyle."

"Smith-Cameron, meanwhile, convinces utterly as Juno, who is single-handedly keeping from penury her useless husband, a radical daughter who’s on strike, and a son maimed in the independence struggle."

"I wish Warchus had reined him in. And perhaps found a less rickety star vehicle to ferry Gerri – sorry, the theatrical grandmistress J – into the West End, great though it is to have her here. She shines – and outshines Rylance."

"Succession’s J Smith-Cameron out-acts Mark Rylance"

"Rylance has top billing, but Succession's Gerri is the real star in this Irish masterpiece"

"It’s certainly a bold choice for director Matthew Warchus to cast three non-Irish actors in the leading roles in this most Irish of plays, overflowing with rich and resonant language. Accent-wise Smith-Cameron fares by far the best, whereas Hilton treads water at some mid-point in the Irish sea and Rylance flaps about."

"He [Mark Rylance] sails dangerously close to giving a “turn” instead of acting a part; his blustering innocent shtick and bent-kneed waddle of a walk is overdone, leaving the series of sucker punch revelations of the third act to land with too much of a discordant jolt."

Smith-Cameron is splendid in her calm constancy, bringing a liberal helping of Gerri’s steely watchfulness to Juno as she navigates to the limits of a patriarchal society further hemmed in by the all-controlling Catholic Church. Kearns is a terrific find as Mary, allowing emotions to flow across her face with startling clarity. Mary’s saving grace, Kearns makes clear, is that she is her redoubtable mother’s daughter and neither of them have time for paycocking around."

"Mark Rylance’s charisma knits together a crowded production that needs room to breathe"

"Despite the marketing behind it, Matthew Warchus’s play doesn’t do much to update either the gender roles or the aesthetic of this stubbornly traditional Irish masterpiece"

"J Smith-Cameron (also known as tantalisingly firm lawyer Geri in Succession) brings plenty of staunch energy to the title’s Juno, her shoulders bearing the weight of a useless husband, a war-wounded son, and a striking daughter in an impoverished Dublin tenement. And Rylance finds all the silliness in the role of the patriarchal Paycock (aka Peacock) Jack Boyle, a former sailor whose life’s great labour is avoiding work – until an unexpected inheritance sets him preening."

"A silver crucifix is suspended above the stage, suggestive of this painful context. But somehow, that deep sense of injustice and pain doesn’t get space to breathe here, in a tenement crowded with furniture and nimble bits of business. Still, Rylance’s charisma knits together a production that’s full of roustabout hilarity and poignancy mingled together, bright and bleak at once."

"Mark Rylance is so over the top he could be auditioning for Mrs Brown’s Boys"

"The actor’s gurning, leering performance makes it hard to take Matthew Warchus’s revival of Sean O’Casey’s play at the Gielgud"

"Mark Rylance has nothing left to prove, of course, but even his diehard admirers may find Matthew Warchus’s revival of Seán O’Casey’s play, set in a Dublin tenement during Ireland’s civil war, very hard going. Rylance doesn’t just seem determined to reprise the showboating Rooster in Jez Butterworth’s hit drama Jerusalem, his clowning goes so over the top that he might as well be auditioning for Mrs Brown’s Boys."

"The Succession star J Smith-Cameron doesn’t disgrace herself as the long-suffering wife Juno. She remains quiet and forbearing. But it’s the ever-reliable Paul Hilton who really catches the eye as the Captain’s dissolute sidekick, Joxer Daly."

"Anna Healy is a joy as the bustling Mrs Madigan, the neighbour who decorously sinks glass after glass of the hard stuff and treats us to some hearty singing."

"A show too in thrall to its stars"

"Flashes of boozy brilliance from the Wolf Hall star cannot save this underwhelming centenary production of Seán O’Casey’s comic melodrama"

"Yet, Rylance, boozy brilliance notwithstanding, serves up a risky, highly mannered performance, full of actorly tics and affectations. He makes Boyle a figure of pathetic ridicule; an idiot man-child full of spluttering cowardly bombast who runs away squealing from his long-suffering wife, Juno. Rylance doesn’t shrink from Boyle’s essential helplessness but his confected, overly self-regarding performance lacks the requisite humanity to make us care."

"Moreover, the flashes of tragic light take too long to register, if they ever do at all. As Juno, J Smith-Cameron (familiar to viewers of Succession as general counsel, Gerri Kellman), is the mature centre to her infantile husband’s storm; she imbues Juno with a flinty pragmatism. Yet her exasperation with her obnoxious husband rarely tips into the necessary desperation. Even in the final scene, having lost almost everything, she maintains a monotone stoicism. The play demands more."

"Turgid"

"Overwrought and tonally conflicted revival of Seán O’Casey’s classic"

"... this turgid production from director Matthew Warchus never quite succeeds in capturing the author’s deep anger or extraordinary compassion. Warchus sets a stiff, strained tone, leaning hard into the play’s comic potential, but smoothing off the sharp edges of its social commentary."

"Mark Rylance provides a riveting focal point as alcoholic, tall-tale-telling ‘Captain’ Jack Boyle. In a wholly committed performance, he stutters and slurs his lines, searching for words through a haze of drink and shame."

"Smith-Cameron invests the character with bone-deep weariness and martyr-like devotion to her family, constantly trying to nag her helpless husband into taking some responsibility. But their relationship has become a pantomime: deep down, both know that neither can change."

"Mark Rylance and J Smith Cameron fail to spark"

"Sometimes plays, like baking, go wrong. The recipe carefully assembled to produce the perfect sponge falls flat as a pancake. This production of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock is a case in point.

"On paper, the ingredients looked right....Yet the result is a horrible melange. Everyone on stage seems to be performing in a different version of the play, there is no chemistry, little sense of purpose."

"Mark Rylance proves even geniuses get it wrong"

"Stars aren’t enough to save this production"

"Mark Rylance never disappoi… oh. Hey, even geniuses can get it wrong, and Rylance’s high-comic lead turn in Seán O’Casey’s 1924 play Juno and the Paycock overwhelms this tragicomedy. He plays Captain Jack, the dissolute, bullshitting, Chaplinesque patriarch who stumbles around his Dublin tenement spouting off. See him on the poster, alongside J Smith-Cameron (Succession) as his wife, Juno, and you see a fellow jauntily making eyes at you. Let’s have a drink together!

"See him on stage, though, and Rylance is barely making eye contact with anyone. Instead, he is tapping into the slurred vaudevillian razzmatazz he gave us in Jerusalem, but in his own silo. It’s one thing to play a man shutting out the rest of the world with his own noise; it’s another to be an actor shutting out the rest of the cast. The fast-talking Smith-Cameron can’t find a way in amid such capering. The evening turns turgid."