Ulysses

It’s our very uneducated guess that there is copy upon copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses hiding on bookshelves or gathering dust under beds, each intimidating potential readers with their magnitude and reputation. Revered as one of the most important novels of the 20th century, Ulysses is a behemoth of modernist literature and still stands tall as a genuinely iconic piece of writing.

It is, as ever, a brave and ambitious decision to reduce 265,000 words to two hours of theatre. Perhaps predictably, this production is unable to grasp the enormity of the task. Its themes and ideas lose a part of their power; with nationhood, race and religion touched on only too briefly and instead replaced with a focus on style rather than substance. 

The production itself is aesthetically without fault, though. In its creation of a world of curiosity and, when coupled with a mechanical and rigid choreography, the play chimes and charms its way with a fitting feeling of the strange and peculiar. The central relationship between Leopold and Molly Bloom (Jean-Paul Van Cauwelaert and Muireann Kelly) is similarly eerie, with Kelly dominating the performance as her captivating, bawdy persona is a permanent figure of sexual frustration, lying on the bed cooing for the attention she so desperately wants. 

It's perhaps unfair to expect this adaptation to truly represent Ulysses’ importance, to translate its baffling obscurity into something concise and entertaining, but ultimately, it can’t, becoming lost in the darkness of the novel’s long, looming shadow.