By Orla O'Sullivan
Musicals are a fluffy form of theater. An Irish musical, it seems however, may open with death, strife and one spouse cursing another, the deceased. So opens "Himself And Nora," a musical play about the lifelong romance between James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, the woman who would become his wife after 27 years together.
As musicals set you up for levity, a title that emphasizes unity, has you expecting harmony. Instead, the rivalry between this pair is stressed even more.
The opening words in this musical are, "Ye selfish shite!" Coming from the same lineage of stereotypical Irish women never at a loss for words and loath to hold them back, I anticipated that the solemnity of the opening scene would be shattered by an attack on the corpse, Joyce, laid out amid some mourners. The laugh from the audience showed that the planned shock largely worked.
Nora's condemnation belies her tenderness. Why didn't James wait for her to get back to his bedside? In reality, Joyce's death was very dramatic. He was rushed to hospital after collapsing in a pub in Zurich, the last stop in the couple's exile from Ireland. Nora supposedly went home for mere minutes, returning to find him dead. The show doesn't convey that, but it seems best to look on it more as an entertainment than history.
Although Joyce himself acknowledged that he used others' words in his work to the point that he questioned whether he was original, and it is held that Molly Bloom, wife of the main character in Joyce's masterpiece "Ulysses" was based on Barnacle, the revisionist history is pushed to an extreme on stage. "My words" are what is on your pages, Nora repeatedly reminds James, a point stressed again toward the end. (It is certainly true that they had their first date on June 16, 1904, the day in which the novel's events take place.)
She cuts Joyce down to size in every way, towering above him in high heels throughout, even when wearing a change of shoes. Hardly an accident. Before Joyce finally agrees to marry her, she walks out on the self-important author, newly puffed up by the publication of "Ulysses," belting out a song with the refrain: "What is a woman without a man? Lucky!" (At that my male companion whispered, "Shouldn't somebody be yelling, 'Go, sister!')
But it was remarkable that a chambermaid who left school at 12 should have been a lifelong match for a private-school boy, Latin scholar and one-time medical student who would go on to be arguably the greatest writer of the twentieth century.
Jessica Burrows, who plays Nora, has a powerful if borderline strident voice, to the point that you wonder were the producers aiming for a kind of Irish Edith Piaf.
The acting is good all round, with the supporting males standing out in some of their several roles: David Arthur who nails a certain Irish devious duplicity in Joyce's father and Brian Sills the simpering priest figure of Joyce's imagination who promises (threatens) always to be with him wherever he goes.
Burrows and Matt Bogart, as Joyce, convey considerable sexual chemistry, even if the bawdiness feels overdone to the point of being embarrassing, such as in the "Comical Carrot" song. But you'd have to credit writer and composer Jonathan Brielle for lyrics that included "insatiable--fellatiable" in some of the couple's repartee.
And, yes, I cried during the number that finds Joyce finally a literary success, but going blind and with his one daughter, Lucia, in a mental asylum. He asks Nora will she leave him now. The answer is a resounding no.
Tomorrow's is the last performance for this short run, but the producers hope there will be another. It would almost be a shame for it to leave the church where it is now playing: a perfectly ironical setting for the man who, run as he might, could never leave "priest-infested Ireland" in his mind or his writing.
