Juno is a Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 with music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein

Marc Blitzstein

Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...

 and book by Joseph Stein

Joseph Stein

Joseph Stein was an American playwright best known for writing the books for such musicals as Fiddler on the Roof and Zorba.-Biography:...

, based closely on the 1924 play Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and one of the most highly regarded and oft-performed plays in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924...

by Sean O'Casey

Seán O'Casey

Seán O'Casey was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.- Early life:...

. The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre

Winter Garden Theatre

The Winter Garden Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 1634 Broadway in midtown Manhattan.-History:The structure was built by William Kissam Vanderbilt in 1896 to be the American Horse Exchange....

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, on March 9, 1959.

Despite light moments, the musical, like the play, is essentially a tragedy. Ths story centers around the disintegration of an Irish family in Dublin in the early 1920s, during the Irish War of Independence

Irish War of Independence

The Irish War of Independence , Anglo-Irish War, Black and Tan War, or Tan War was a guerrilla war mounted by the Irish Republican Army against the British government and its forces in Ireland. It began in January 1919, following the Irish Republic's declaration of independence. Both sides agreed...

. Juno is a hardworking matriarch who strives to hold her family together in the face of war, betrayal, and her worthless husband's drinking. For a more detailed synopsis see the article for Sean O'Casey's original play

Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and one of the most highly regarded and oft-performed plays in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924...

.

Modern scholars of musical theatre consider Blitzstein and Stein's musicalization of the source material to be strong, but initial reviews of the piece were mostly negative, mainly because critics and audiences felt that the story was too dark for a musical. The production closed after only 16 performances. Fortunately, Blitzstein's score was preserved by Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

, which released the original cast album in both mono and stereo editions. The Fynsworth Alley label re-released the recording on compact disc in 2002.

Revival of Juno has since been attempted a few times with little success, with revisions and new material by Richard Maltby, Jr.

Richard Maltby, Jr.

Richard Eldridge Maltby, Jr. is an American theatre director and producer, lyricist, and screenwriter. He is also well known as a constructor of cryptic crossword puzzles. He has done this for Harper's Magazine, sometimes in collaboration with E. R...

 and severely reduced orchestrations. City Center's Encores!

Encores!

Encores! Great American Musicals in Concert is a program that has been presented by New York City Center since 1994. Encores! is dedicated to performing the full score of musicals that rarely are heard in New York City...

 presented a semi-staged concert production of Juno on March 27 to 30, 2008 directed by Garry Hynes

Garry Hynes

Garry Hynes is an Irish theatre director. She holds the distinction of being the first female to win the prestigious Tony Award for direction of a play.Hynes was born in Ballaghadereen, Roscommon County and educated at St...

, starring Victoria Clark

Victoria Clark

Victoria Clark is an American musical theatre singer and actress. Clark has performed in many Broadway musicals and in other theatre, film and television work, and her soprano voice can be heard on numerous cast albums and several animated films...

 and John Schuck

John Schuck

Conrad John Schuck Jr. is an American actor, primarily in stage, movies and television. He is best-known for his roles as police commissioner Rock Hudson's mildly slow-witted assistant, Sgt. Charles Enright in the 1970s crime drama McMillan & Wife, and as Lee Meriwether's husband, Herman Munster...

 using the original orchestrations. Critical response was more favorable after nearly fifty years, with praise for the score and performances.

Original production details

Direction was originally to have been by Tony Richardson

Tony Richardson

Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson was an English theatre and film director and producer.-Early life:Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist...

, who dropped out of the production during the early stages. Vincent J. Donehue

Vincent J. Donehue

Vincent Julian Donehue was an American director noted mainly for his theatre work, with occasional film and television credits....

 replaced him, but the rest of the creative team were not satisfied with his work. He was then replaced by José Ferrer

José Ferrer

José Vicente Ferrer de Otero y Cintrón , best known as José Ferrer, was a Puerto Rican actor, as well as a theater and film director...

. Orchestrations were by Blitzstein, with additional support from Robert Russell Bennett

Robert Russell Bennett

Robert Russell Bennett was an American composer and arranger, best known for his orchestration of many well-known Broadway and Hollywood musicals by other composers such as Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. In 1957 and 2008, Bennett received Tony Awards...

 and Hershy Kay

Hershy Kay

Hershy Kay was an American composer, arranger, and orchestrator. He is most noteworthy for the orchestrations of several Broadway shows, and for the ballets he arranged for George Balanchine's New York City Ballet....

. The show was conducted by Robert Emmett Dolan and choreographed

Choreography

Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...

 by Agnes de Mille

Agnes de Mille

Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.-Early years:Agnes de Mille was born in New York City into a well-connected family of theater professionals. Her father William C. deMille and her uncle Cecil B. DeMille were both Hollywood directors...

.

The production starred Shirley Booth

Shirley Booth

Shirley Booth was an American actress.Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950...

 (as Juno Boyle), Melvyn Douglas

Melvyn Douglas

Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...

 (as Captain Boyle), Jack MacGowran

Jack MacGowran

John Joseph "Jack" MacGowran was an Irish character actor, whose last film role was as the alcoholic director Burke Dennings in The Exorcist. He was probably best known for his work with Samuel Beckett.-Stage career:...

 (as Joxer), and Tommy Rall

Tommy Rall

Thomas Edward "Tommy" Rall is an American ballet dancer, tap dancer and acrobatic dancer who was a prominent featured player in 1950s musical comedies...

 (as Johnny Boyle), with a cast that also included Loren Driscoll, Monte Amundsen

Monte Amundsen

Monte Amundsen was an American opera and musical singer who appeared on Broadway in Marc Blitzstein's musical Juno in 1959.-Biography:...

, Nancy Andrews

Nancy Andrews (actress)

Nancy Andrews was an American stage and film actress and singer.- Biography :Nancy Andrews was born in Minneapolis on December 16, 1920. Her parents were James Currier Andrews and Grace Ella Andrews . She attended Beverley Hills High School and the Los Angeles City College...

, Jean Stapleton, and Sada Thompson

Sada Thompson

Sada Carolyn Thompson was an American stage, film, and television actress.-Life and career:Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1927 to Hugh Woodruff Thompson and his wife Corlyss , and raised in New Jersey, Thompson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, after...

.

Musical Numbers

Act I

• We're Alive - Ensemble
• I Wish It So - Mary Boyle
• Song of the Ma - Juno Boyle
• We Can Be Proud - Foley, Sullivan, Michael Brady and Paddy Coyne
• Daarlin' Man - "Captain" Jack Boyle, "Joxer" Daly and Ensemble
• One Kind Word - Jerry Devine
• Old Sayin's - Juno Boyle and "Captain" Jack Boyle
• What Is The Stars - "Captain" Jack Boyle and "Joxer" Daly
• Old Sayin's (Reprise) - Juno Boyle and "Captain" Jack Boyle
• You Poor Thing - Mrs. Madigan, Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Coyne and Miss Quinn
• Dublin Night - Johnny Boyle, Molly and Ensemble
• My True Heart - Mary Boyle and Charlie Bentham
• On a Day Like This - Juno Boyle, "Captain" Jack Boyle and Ensemble

Act II

• Bird Upon the Tree - Juno Boyle and Mary Boyle
• Music in the House - "Captain" Jack Boyle and Ensemble
• The Liffy Waltz - Ensemble
• Hymn - I. R. A. Singer
• Johnny - Johnny Boyle and Molly
• You Poor Thing (Reprise) - Mrs. Madigan, Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Coyne and Miss Quinn
• For Love - Mary Boyle
• One Kind Word (Reprise) - Jerry Devine
• Where? - Juno Boyle