SEAN O’CASEY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17738, 7 January 1926, Page 9

SEAN O’CASEY.

NEW IRISH DRAMATIST. There was a big Irish night at the Royalty Theatre, London, recently, when the Irish Players appeared in Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock” for the first time in England. The play was produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1924, and there are many, including J. B. Fagan, who regard O'Casey as the biggest discovery of the Abbey Theatre since Synge. O’Casey was born in a Dublin tenement house, and is one of a number of men of mark who have been newspaper boys in their days of lesser importance. O’Casey also worked at a chandlery stores, as railway labourer, navvy, hod-man, and a few other jobs during the early years of his manhood. His first play to be produced was “The Shadow of a Gunman,” which won instant success. ‘‘Since then I have never had a minute's peace from the work and the thought of the drama,” said O’Casey, to an interviewer. “Juno and the Pavcock” is a stark, forbidding work which has the same commendable economy of expression as the work of Eugene O’Neill. It gives an unpleasant insight into Irish life, and it is a frank commentary on the political situation when it w r as involved alarmingly by the activities of the Black and Tans. O’Casey is a fine playwright but the torch of Synge’s genius has not been handed his way.