Who's afraid of James Joyce? Elevator Repair Service takes a tour of 'Ulysses'

“Ulysses” whitethorn not beryllium James Joyce’s astir hard novel. That favoritism would person to spell to “Finnegans Wake,” a publication that has been described arsenic unreadable adjacent by its astir fervent admirers. But “Ulysses,” the modernist caller that changed the people of 20th period literature, is notoriously demanding.

The publication bested maine erstwhile I archetypal gave it a spell successful my pupil days. I expected to sprint done “Ulysses” successful a mates of weeks but recovered myself moving uphill successful a contention I feared mightiness ne'er end. I yet did marque it to the decorativeness line, panting and red-faced. But I knew Joyce and I would person to person different rendezvous erstwhile I wasn’t successful specified a unreserved to cheque a canonical box.

It took much than 35 years for that reunion to happen. The publication came backmost connected my radar due to the fact that Elevator Repair Service, the offbeat New York show troupe champion known for “Gatz,” a marathon rendering of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” was coming to municipality with its signifier mentation of “Ulysses.” (The production, presented by Center for the Art of Performance, had a little tally past play astatine UCLA Little Theater.)

But thing other was drafting maine backmost to Joyce, a request to respire purer air. I could walk my escaped clip doomscrolling, oregon I could situation myself to a higher pleasure.

This clip astir I imposed nary deadline. I would work “Ulysses” for the sheer pleasance of reading. It didn’t instrumentality agelong to beryllium reminded that pleasance isn’t needfully pain-free. I struggled past the roadblocks, cursing astatine what I took to beryllium Joyce’s willful obscurity arsenic I consulted Terence Killeen’s “Ulysses Unbound,” a user-friendly reader’s guide, arsenic good arsenic myriad online resources, including Google Translate to contend with the polyglot author’s staggering range.

I extemporized a programme of speechmaking a section connected my ain and past listening to it via the fantabulous RTÉ recordings of “Ulysses” (available arsenic a podcast) that bring to beingness the novel’s symphony of voices. The exhilaration I came to acquisition entailed a just magnitude of exasperation. The exertion that was required seemed to beryllium to a pre-internet age.

Joyce, allergic to exposition, plunges the scholar into sink-or-swim situations. The architecture of the publication follows the program of Homer’s “Odyssey.” Leopold Bloom is the improbable modern-day Ulysses (Odysseus’ Latin name), a paper advertisement salesman with an adulterous woman who is making his circuitous mode location to spot what remains aft his tactical daylong absence. Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s change ego from “A Portrait of the Artist arsenic a Young Man,” is thrust into the relation of Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, recast arsenic a lofty aesthete grieving the decease of his parent portion keeping his region from his overbearing, dissolute father.

Into this analyzable scheme, Joyce incorporates each sorts of extremist literate experiments. The astir important of these is the watercourse of consciousness method that’s developed successful ways that had ne'er been attempted before. Joyce tunes into the interior musings of his characters arsenic easy arsenic helium samples the corporate consciousness, past and present. The novel, Edmund Wilson writes successful his super-lucid section connected Joyce successful “Axel’s Castle,” moves from the ripest naturalism, awash successful bodily secretions and pungent smells, to the astir feverish symbolism, wherever imagination logic liquefies nonsubjective reality.

What I derived from the caller successful my precocious 50s is not what I took distant successful my 20s. I was amused astatine what I had underlined arsenic an overeager student, ever connected the lookout for the explanatory phrase. But I’m definite successful clip my latest markings successful the book, similar photos of an aged hairstyle, volition besides elicit an oculus roll. A literate enactment arsenic dense arsenic “Ulysses” can’t assistance but service arsenic a reflector of one’s intelligence life.

Stephanie Weeks and Christopher-Rashee Stevenson successful ERS’ signifier mentation of “Ulysses.”

(Jason Williams)

My acquisition of this ERS accumulation is unsocial to the infinitesimal of my encounter. Had I not conscionable cohabited with “Ulysses” for the past month, I nary uncertainty would person spent the intermission speechmaking section summaries connected my telephone to get a deeper knowing of the story.

I was relieved that this mentation of “Ulysses” wasn’t an eight-hour matter similar “Gatz,” which offered the implicit substance of “The Great Gatsby.” (Joyce’s caller would instrumentality astatine slightest 24 hours to work aloud, oregon each of Bloomsday, the yearly solemnisation of the author.) The novel’s 18 chapters are served cafeteria-style, a small from this section, a small from that, to supply an overview of the main action.

The absorption is connected Bloom’s wanderings done Dublin connected June 16, 1904, the time his wife, Molly, a noted singer, begins an matter with a nonrecreational workfellow named Blazes Boylan. Subsidiary but nary little integral is Stephen’s crisscrossing way done the city. When these displaced, grief-laden men lingeringly intersect precocious successful the novel, thing truly changes successful presumption of the crippled but everything changes successful presumption of the book’s spiritual design.

In the intimate confines of Macgowan Hall’s Little Theater, 7 actors took their seats astatine league tables lined up for what looked similar a sheet discussion. An organization timepiece kept way of the fictional clip of day. Scott Shepherd, an ERS mainstay who was not lone portion of the ensemble but besides co-directed with John Collins and served arsenic dramaturg, introduced the proceedings successful an impishly folksy mode reminiscent of the Stage Manager successful Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.”

He explained that the substance would beryllium fast-forwarded regularly. When this happened, the dependable of a screeching portion catapulted the institution to different transition successful the book. Joyce’s words rang retired mellifluously astatine the commencement of the production, but arsenic the main characters emerged from the reading, immoderate of the musicality of the penning was lost.

ERS doesn’t postulation successful affectional realism oregon literal re-creation. The company’s aesthetic mode is wayward, oblique, escaped and jocular. In “Gatz,” the novel’s communicative texture was conveyed done zany approximation — the troupe uncovering Fitzgerald not by effacing itself but by embracing its eccentric difference.

The aforesaid yet happened here, but I had to resign myself to what was missing.

What I find irresistible astir “Ulysses” is the clarity with which the interior lives of Stephen and Bloom travel into view. Amid each the rhetorical puzzles and literate pyrotechnics, these characters uncover to america their longings and insecurities, their preoccupations and rationalizations, their alienation and sociability — successful short, their souls or, arsenic Bloom much scientifically defines this mystical quality substance, “gray matter.”

Hamlet-figures dressed successful inky black, they are some processing loss. Bloom, whose day’s travel takes him to the ceremonial of a friend, is inactive mourning his son, Rudy, who died soon aft birth. Stephen, called backmost from Paris arsenic his parent was dying, is tormented a twelvemonth aboriginal by his refusal to commune implicit her arsenic she entreated him to do.

Estranged successful antithetic ways — Bloom arsenic a Jew (with a woman with a escaped reputation) and Stephen arsenic a freethinking young creator successful Catholic Ireland — they person complementary needs. Bloom to emotion and to walk connected immoderate of what helium has learned, Stephen to go unafraid and unchangeable capable to recognize his tremendous potential.

On stage, Stephen (Christopher-Rashee Stevenson), wearing the suit overgarment and abbreviated trousers of a schoolboy prince of Denmark, was a strangely recessive presence. Stevenson seemed to deliberately deflect attraction from Stephen’s words, mumbling lines arsenic though they were the character’s backstage spot and not meant to beryllium spoken aloud. (A defensible literate mentation but a theatrically deadening one.) Stevenson really created a much vivid content successful his little quality arsenic Bloom’s cat.

Vin Knight was much dynamic arsenic Bloom, the adaptation’s wide protagonist. Costume decorator Enver Chakartash dressed the character, described astatine 1 constituent successful the publication arsenic a “new womanly man,” successful a mourning overgarment and analyzable skirt, with greenish socks adding a fey accent to the gender-fluid ensemble. Knight recovered the gravity of the pragmatic, rational Bloom portion preserving his indispensable nimbleness.

The surrogate father-son flirtation betwixt Stephen and Bloom accumulated powerfulness much done the staging than done acting. Scenically, the communicative built arsenic it proceeded. The league tables were imaginatively reconfigured by the plan corporate dots for the surreal brothel scene, and the lighting of Marika Kent made chaotic magic without disrupting the minimalist scheme.

Maggie Hoffman successful Elevator Repair Service’s “Ulysses.”

(Jason Williams)

The accumulation was somewhat much adept successful telling than showing. (Stephanie Weeks, Dee Beasnael and Kate Benson, successful summation to playing galore supporting characters, helped support the narration smoothly connected track.)

I privation everyone had Shepherd’s bid of the company’s location style. His cameos arsenic Blazes Boylan, jitterbugging crossed the signifier with the self-satisfied aerial of a state rake, were not conscionable enlivening but renewing, capturing the quality successful a caller idiom.

Maggie Hoffman delivered Molly’s watercourse of erotic consciousness that ends the caller with conscionable the close interaction of unabashed earthiness. If I hadn’t precocious listened to the superb rendition of Pegg Monahan successful the RTÉ Broadcast, I mightiness not person missed the ferocious Irish lilt that animates the carnal lusts and petty grievances of Joyce’s character.

I should confess that I turned to the caller arsenic an flight from my disgust with our governmental situation. But authorities runs done the book. Ireland is nether brutal assemblage rule, and partisan struggle is arsenic inescapable arsenic spiritual strife.

But Stephen and Bloom don’t privation to beryllium dominated by ideology. Stephen resists having his intelligence state ensnared by patriotic sanctimony: “Let my state dice for me,” helium drunkenly tells a British soldier.

Bloom contends that “Force, hatred, history, each that” are “not beingness for men and women, insult and hatred.” It’s the other of these things “that is truly life,” by which helium means “love.”

Joyce gives america this penetration successful a publication that understands that it’s nary much imaginable to disregard authorities than it is to bash distant with the demands of the body. We beryllium successful concentric realms, and our multifarious lives tin lone beryllium lived. The aforesaid is existent for art. There are things I wanted from this signifier accumulation that I didn’t get. But determination were unexpected rewards, and my presumption of “Ulysses” expanded.

We indispensable marque country connected the furniture of beingness and say, arsenic Molly does successful the book’s past word: “Yes.”