MARK RYLANCE has been announced among the cast in a revival of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock which is set to open in the West End this month.
Rylance will play ‘Captain’ Jack Boyle in the Sonia Friedman production, which is being directed by the Tony and Olivier award-winner Matthew Warchus, which is scheduled for a short run at the Gielgud Theatre.
Set in Dublin in 1922, where the Irish Civil War is tearing the nation apart, O’Casey’s drama is centred around the cauldron of the Boyle family’s tiny tenement flat.
There Juno Boyle, a beleaguered matriarch, struggles to make ends meet and keep the family together.
Born on the north side of Dublin in 1880, O’Casey lived through some of Ireland’s most troubled and turbulent times – including the 1913 lock-out and strike, the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish Civil War.
Mark Rylance will star in Juno and the Paycock at the Gielgud TheatreThose themes are found within three plays which he wrote in his 40s depicting the lives of the slum dwellers he was familiar with.
His plays, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars are all now deemed some of the greatest of the twentieth century.
It was only after Juno and the Paycock was performed at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1924 that O’Casey made a name for himself and was he able to give up his job as a labourer working on the roads in Ireland's capital city.
In this month’s London revival of that play, J Smith-Cameron, who has starred in the likes of Succession and Divorce, will play Juno Boyle.
Irish stage star Ingrid Craigie also features, as well as Fair City actor Aisling Kearns.
Juno and The Paycock runs at London’s Gielgud Theatre from September 21 to November 23.
