Juno and The Paycock

Lally Cadeau played Juno Boyle in Sean O'Casey classic

Mar 18, 2007 Coral Andrews

Actress Lally Cadeau chats about one of her favourite roles as Juno Boyle in Sean O'Casey's Juno and The Paycock.

Great creative minds think alike. Lally Cadeau and Stratford Festival artistic director Richard Monette were both thinking of Sean O'Casey's Juno and The Paycock at the same time.

"Richard had called me the year before saying would I like to come and play the title role in Filumena and I said yes." recalls Cadeau.

"They asked me what else I would like to do so I did a little research and I came up - through friends - with the idea for Juno and The Paycock and they had also considered that. I went to the research library in Toronto and read and read through plays.

I started throwing them over my shoulders, tedious.. blah blah blah .. period … and went through all these contemporary plays and thought 'Oh My God, how did anyone ever put this on,' and then I got to Juno and thought that’s it – the language, the relationships, the characters –it’s a fabulous play.

I think that (director) Janet Wright did a beautiful job of staging and directing it - no holds barred – no sugar coating in the production. Brian Tree (who played Joxer Daly) and I had a meeting with some Yale students afterwards and they said they had seen many Junos, but they had never seen one that was that angry. Why were you so angry?

The director felt that was the right approach. Actors can't always ... you are serving the play and you are serving the director as well and that’s the director’s vision and that’s what you go with. Sometimes actors get criticized for taking a particular approach or showing no vulnerability, so you have probably had a director give you that note – no vulnerability. I don’t want to see you cry. People are thinking ..my God her son is dead..

Janet said no. There’s that tough, that callous, grief that goes so deep that there are no tears.

When you read about the real living conditions in Dublin at that time, those wonderful Georgian houses that were divided into 15 apartments and where your toilet facilities were, well... that’s the way you lived. You are not in a very good mood. You husband's getting pissed with his best friend all the time, your daughter’s pregnant, your son is murdered …"

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