Unfortunately, the production had been stuck in a church hall. I write professionally on amateur theatre, and this performance was incredibly instructive for *me*, in terms of what works and what doesn't in such performances. (The loud and booming, yes; the subtle and finicky, often not.) I assume that this was originally put on in a small, intimate, but focused professional space, where I think it would have worked like gangbusters. In a rectangular hall, the focus was off: performers' departures from the stage felt too much like infelicities of production designer, rather than some sort of Schechner-y "the performers are just real people hanging out" vibe. Again, I feel sort of bad criticizing a company for getting stuck in a space they could not possibly have devised--but I think this is a learning opportunity for what sort of spaces suit certain kinds of theatre.
The performance itself justified a stage adaptation of the novel, which to my mind is always a high (and not always attended-to) bar to clear. I've never understood the terror of Stephen's Jesuit retreat more clearly: the long descriptions as hell, which read as a bit camp on the page, seemed utterly convincing. The family argument over Parnell, too, clarified a section of the novel I always found a bit of a slog. Indeed how long it took to read out these speeches really stuck with me: saying that this production helped me see how voluble the Irish are makes it maybe sound like less of a revelation than it was, but this really helped me to see just how long it would take to read a novel--even dialogue sections--out loud.
The decision to have a female actor play Stephen did interesting things in this section, and I think throughout: s/he came across as a real outsider to every normal situation he was put in, and I think the female casting--and the performance--heightened the sexual fluidity of the Author. (If not, so near as I understand, of the author himself.) I was maybe less in love with Stephen on the cross getting felt up by the female cast members, but hooray for the decision for a female demon to throw urine on Our Hero--something that I think Joyce himself was ready to have happen by the time of Ulysses.
Indeed, the veneration for Stephen missed the ways that I think Joyce himself distanced, well, himself from this figure. Some decisions in this adaptation paid off less well. The play was in love with the idea that Joyce and Stephen are one and the same; and, further, the piece was a bit in love with the idea of "Joyce, the Champion of the World": the bestest, smartest, winningest person ever. That the production dressed him like Harry Potter only highlighted this: this Joyce seemed adrift amidst the muggles. Of course this conflation of Portrait and autobiography elided a lot of the most important presences in Joyce's life, in particular Norah Barnacle: it is the rare account of Joyce these days that seeks to sideline her presences in his life, but this was one of them. Or, I guess, this is an account of Portrait of the Artist taking over Joyce's own autobiography--maybe interesteing on a metatextual level, but a betrayal of much of Joyce's actual life.
I should also say that this was very much a production for those converted to the cult of Joyce, aware of the great man's greatness. Some of the biographical details mentioned briefly in the production would not at all have been clear to those not familiar with his life story. And I think Joyce's language frankly could have been cut more: there are long swathes of not-very-theatrical text throughout here. Nevertheless, this led me to rethink a novel I know quite well; unusual indeed the stage adaptation that does that.
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