Juno and the Paycock The New York Irish Center

The Shaughraun

The Storm Theatre

WRITTEN in 1924 when the sharp wounds of the Irish Civil War were still smarting in the audience's memory, Juno and the Paycock concerns itself with the conflict between the Die-Hards (Irish Republicans) and the Free-Staters, who supported Ireland's treaty with England, which allowed Home Rule, but included impossible provisions like an oath to the King and the partition of the six counties.

The surprise of the play then - and now - was that it was utterly hilarious. Nothing, wrote Samuel Beckett, is funnier than unhappiness. Though on the surface there's little enough to bind these two great Irish dramatists - it's fair to say that like O'Casey, Beckett's sense of the absurd was tragic and imbued with deep compassion.

Ireland in 1922 was coming apart at the seams. It was in a state of "chassis" socially and politically.

Against this backdrop the everyday lives of the ordinary Irish citizens unfold. At the time O'Casey was thought as a maverick for placing the lives and experiences of recognizably modern working class Irish people on the stage; but he lives in a tenement himself and he was intimately acquainted with the world he was writing about.

You're unlikely to witness a more authentic performance of O'Casey's brilliant tragicomedy than the one presented by PJM Productions and the Celtic Theatre at The New York Irish Center in Queens, which ended its run last weekend.

Cast with actors who are as familiar with the themes and accents of the play as it's possible to be, there's a surprising degree of sophistication in this admirable production, directed by Pat Mahoney.

Standout performances on the night included Peter Maguire as Captain Jack Boyle, David P. O'Hara, who was harrowing as his damaged son, and Caitlin Simkovich, who gave an understated and moving performance as the captain's daughter. Diana Harkin also broke hearts and raised the rafters with her singing skills.

The show will now play in Riverdale in the Bronx on January 26 and 27.

Meanwhile, the Storm Theatre in New York is presenting The Shaughraun. Decades before Wilde and Shaw revitalized English theater with their Irish wit and wisdom, there was Dion Boucicault, a far less celebrated but nonetheless prodigiously talented Irish dramatist who had his first hit play with London Assurance in 1841, and who then went on to write over 150 plays and travel to America.

Boucicault's theatrical career took off in the mid 19th century when he made the intelligent decision to pander shamelessly to melodramatic tastes of that time. The Shaughraun is typical Boucicault fare - and perhaps the only Irish play of the Victorian era where an English soldier is the hero. If that doesn't tip you off to the fact that you're watching a fairytale then nothing will.

There is a villain to hiss at, a beautiful damsel in distress, her wrongly accused brother, an endearingly out of his depth English soldier, a kindly priest who can never tell a lie, a scheming informer and, of course, the handsome Shaughraun himself, a sharp witted acrobat who loves whisky, women and poaching in equal measure.

Boucicault almost single-handedly invented the tradition of the charming but thoroughly unreliable stage Irishman as we now know him - a broth of a boy with a song in his hear and a fiddle by his side, a half lay-about, half Hermes. What other Irish play or playwright of the 19th century would have dared to depict the English Red Coat soldiers as a benign and welcome force?

As the play opens Captain Molineaux, pitch perfectly acted by Kris Kling, is a kindly and dashing English soldier who impresses all who encounter him. Hats are doffed, blessings are muttered and there's even some surprising and unironic talk about the quality.

On the Irish side of the equation Father Dolan, played selflessly by Joe Sullivan, is both the conscience and - it is made clear - the force of law in the community of Suil-a-beg. But between these two poles reside the anarchic, free wheeling Irish themselves, and of course there's the Shaughraun, the living embodiment of the Irish sense of fun.

Boucicault was no trailblazer. It's not the colonial forces but the Irish themselves who are both the heroes and villains of this tale.

Corry Kinchela, the scheming Irish squire who double crosses everyone in his path, is a well-known native of the town, and in his determination to acquire new properties and the beautiful women who live on them, he stops at nothing.

Worse, we learn that the lamentable squire has sent the young woman's brother to a penal colony in Australia, and then confiscated his estate. Ross DeGraw plays this everyday monster with a persuasive degree of rage and narcissism, and he even manages to wring real pathos and menace from an otherwise thoroughly contrived script.

Other standouts in this lively romp include Clodagh Bowyer, the Shaungraun's longsuffering but indulgent mother. Glenn Peters gives a spirited performance as Harvey Duff, the slippery rogue who'd stop at nothing to further his own ends

But the play belongs to the gifted Mark DeYoung, an inspired choice as the beguiling title character.

The Storm Theatre is located at145 West 46th Street. For tickets call 212-868-4444.