Heroics woven out of tragedy

These final words in Sean O'Casey's first major play, Juno and the Peacock, are definitive judgments on that macabre misnomer ''a civil war''. They will be heard again in a new production, directed by Mark Lambert, opening in the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, this week.

He has gathered together a strong mixture of Scottish and Irish actors. Captain Jack Boyle, the Peacock of the title, is played by Roy Hanlon; his wife, Juno, by Ann-Louise Ross; and his sycophantic ''butty'', Joxer Daly, is Conleth Hill. The two pivotal female roles of bereaved Mrs Tancred and sceptical Maisie Madigan go to Kate Binchy and Ruth Hegarty.

The play first appeared in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on March 3, 1924. It was a production immortalised in the theatre's history by the performances of Sara Allgood (Juno), Barry Fitzgerald (Boyle), and F J McCormick (Joxer). It became a popular success.

Sean Casey (he later added the O) was born on March 30, 1880, the thirteenth child (only four survived) of protestant parents Michael and Susan Casey at 85 Upper Dorset Street, Dublin. Middle-class in a middle-class area. His father died when he was six. After a long and prolific career he himself died in self-exiled Torquay in 1964. Juno in this play is based on his mother, who died in 1918.

The play opens in 1922. On the streets of Dublin a bitter war rages between the ''Diehards'' and those who have accepted the treaty with Britain that lead to partition in Ireland. The Boyles, a household of four, live in a two-room tenancy in a tenement. They share the building with a variety of characters. Joxer of the ''shudderin' shoulders'', the ''widow'' Madigan, ''needle'' Nugent the tailor, a red hot and blushing socialist called Devine and Mrs Tancred. In tragic resonance with her father's final words Mary, daughter of the house, ''a well-made girl of 22'', reads aloud of another casualty ''on a little byroad out beyant Finglas''. This is the betrayed son of Mrs Tancred.

Death, fear of death, and the living death of poverty preoccupy 45-year-old Juno. That is when she is not mothering adult children and her procrastinating husband, the 60-year-old Jack Boyle. His title Captain is due to a much fantasised voyage to Liverpool on a coal boat. As rogue males vacillate the women weave heroics out of tragedy.

The muted celebration of the foundations of the state last year in Ireland is in no small way due to the early questioning of O'Casey's women about the mock-heroics of martyrdom. This is why Samuel Beckett, in 1932, called O'Casey ''The Dynamiter'', and of this play wrote: ''(in it) mind and world come asunder in irreparable disassociation.''

During the Lyceum's spring season last year Lambert directed a much acclaimed production of Brian Friel's Translations (Hanlon played in the 1980 original production in Derry). Lambert's production focused on the lines of the hedgemaster, Hugh: ''It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.''

The facts and images of O'Casey are silhouettes of ''chassis'' dramatised on ''byroads''. As ''murdering hate'' stalks the streets, compassion replaces sentiment in the characters' lives.

The great Irish critic, John Jordan, writing on the occasion of O'Casey's centenary in 1980, said: ''For my money, any production of Juno on which the curtain does not descend in silence is ultimately a failure.'' This is a formidable challenge to Lyceum custom. It must, however, be noted. For it is only then that history's hindsight, articulated by the playwright's passion, allows the release of an audience's applause.

n Juno and the Peacock, Royal Lyceum Company, Edinburgh, from tomorrow to March 7, 7.45, matinees February 21, 25, and 28, March 7 2.30pm.