Sir, – Like Fintan O’Toole I am delighted there are so many interesting productions on at the Dublin International Theatre Festival and that talent is abundant (Culture Shock, Weekend Review, October 8th). I have observed the work of Ireland’s young generation and fully support it.
With this in mind, I have to say I am shocked by what I see as Mr O'Toole's blindness to the qualities of great theatre. I have seen many productions of my father's play Juno and the Paycockand from these productions I can pick out performances that I still remember with wonder: Colin Blakely as Captain Boyle, Ron Cook as Joxer and Judi Dench as Juno, for example. I loathed the old Abbey Theatre production with Eileen Crow as Juno, I have tolerated Peter O'Toole as Captain Boyle and Siobhan McKenna as Juno, both of whom I otherwise admire. Mr O'Toole praises Joe Dowling's successful production.
In all honesty I would like to praise Howard Davies’s production over Joe Dowling’s. In the current show the play is laid bare. There is no sentimentality. Rather there is an honesty that is true to the text.
The company is beautifully integrated and all characters have their space. The bridge into Sam Beckett’s work could not be clearer in this version: particularly in the final scene; it is a revelation. The honesty can also be found in the reading of Sean’s autobiographies, where you will find that his mother (Juno) scoured the floors daily, as did so many of the tenement women, to keep the dirt and disease from their overcrowded homes.
My father, too, had his own thoughts throughout his life about drama and where it was going in the modern age, and I know that both he and my mother Eileen would rush with me to praise this seminal production. Accents are not an issue as such, when you have two such brilliant performances given by Ciaran Hinds and Sinead Cusack. The entire Juno company is a joy to behold, for Ireland to celebrate. Mr Davies’s universal and deep understanding of the work seems appropriate to a world of international theatre of the kind that is celebrated by the Dublin International Theatre Festival.
Hoorah, as Sean would say. – Yours, etc.