Barry Fitzgerald, who played Captain Jack Boyle in the original stage production, appears as an orator in the first scene, but has no other role. In the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War, Captain Boyle lives in a two-room tenement flat with his wife Juno and their two young children Mary and Johnny. Juno has dubbed her husband "the Paycock" because she thinks him as useful and vain as a peacock. Juno works while the Captain loafs around the flat when not drinking up the family's meagre finances at the neighbourhood pub.