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Strange title, Juno and the Paycock. Sean O’Casey’s family drama is about a hard-pressed Dublin matriarch, Juno, whose husband Jack ‘the paycock’ Boyle refuses to support his family and spends all day drinking with his penniless cronies. The producers have labelled the show an ‘Irish masterpiece’, which raises the bar.

Mark Rylance plays Jack as a stammering, dissembling, wisecracking malingerer and he’s terrific value on stage, of course, but he seems detached from the material. He performs like a star comedian stranded in a boring classic against his will and he pokes fun at the script rather than immersing himself in the story. His halting, semi-improvised delivery relies on the same range of gimmicks that he showcases in every part he takes, whether it’s a Shakespearean tragedy or a romantic farce. He’s always brilliant – and always the same.

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The plot in O’Casey’s lumbering yarn gets started when a lawyer arrives to announce that Jack has inherited £2,000 from a long-lost cousin. The legacy transforms him into a cocky and pretentious spendthrift who dresses in tailored suits and fills his crumbling hovel with costly furniture supplied by greedy tradesmen at inflated prices. It’s the kind of clunky but enjoyable plot-twist that Neil Simon might have dreamed up. However, the play is a century old and its cultural atmosphere is fading into obscurity.

The ponderous second act is like a nostalgic vaudeville routine. Jack and his neighbours share a bottle of whisky while singing folk songs, telling jokes and swapping antique gossip about Parnell’s career, the corrupt clergy, the Easter Rising, the fighting on O’Connell Street and so on. Truly turgid stuff. You’ll probably miss a lot of the references unless you’re an expert on Irish culture.