Anna Burnside says ‘there is much to love about this throw-everything-at-the-wall production’.
A troupe of actors from Scranton, a rustbelt town in Pennsylvania, is an hour away from putting Ulysses on the stage. They still can’t agree on exactly how. “Oirish” accents? A chirpy musical number? Puppets?
As the final rehearsal unfolds, tales from current day Scranton mesh into Joyce’s Dublin as the actors’ real lives run parallel to the trials of Dedalus, Bloom et al.
Ulysses is, as we are reminded more than once, unstageable and unadaptable, so credit to anyone who even embarks on such a project. New Vintage Ensemble’s version has the key characters but only hints at the intricacies of the story.
Some characters win their arguments with the director - the musical number, based on Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, makes the cut. The puppets come in handy filling out the cast in a five-strong production. The accents are binned. On the basis of a two-line try out, this is the correct decision.
There is much to love about this throw-everything-at-the-wall production, the type of optimistic enterprise that has become rare in the sharp-elbowed 21st-century Fringe.
Writer-director Conor Kelly O’Brien cleverly weaves the personality clashes of the ensemble and the ket-fuelled chaos of the Scranton St Patrick’s Day parade into the narrative of Joyce’s modernist classic.
Sadly, we never hear exactly why Mandy Pennington got into a fight with a horse. But, using little more than her eyebrows and a boater, she does a tremendous job of Blazes Boylan.
When so many shows are thirst traps for TV producers, Ulysses of Scranton is the perfect antidote.
Ulysses of Scranton performs at the Bedlam Theatre at 11:00 (60 minutes) until 29 August 2026 (no performances on the 17th, 24th or 25th). For further information, go to the Fringe website.
RSS