Boston's Alternative Source!
 
Feedback

[Theater reviews]

State of the Art
Re Joyce and song

BY ANNE MARIE DONAHUE

Richard Nelson was dead serious when he came up with the idea of making a musical out of " The Dead, " the famed final story in the collection James Joyce published in 1914 as Dubliners. He’s well aware that the concept invites skepticism and wisecracks. Can " The Dead " sing and dance and still be true to Joyce? Nelson says that it not only can but does, and he backs up the claim with the reviews and awards the show garnered when it opened at New York’s Playwrights Horizons and then transferred to Broadway. James Joyce’s The Dead — which won a Tony for Nelson, who wrote the book, as well as the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Musical — opens the Huntington Theatre Company season this week, in a production that Nelson will direct himself. " It has surprised a lot of people, and I hope it will surprise some more. "

About 10 years ago, Nelson decided he’d like to do a musical in a style similar that of his plays, which include Two Shakespearean Actors and Some Americans Abroad. " I wanted to do a Chekhovian kind of musical, a character-based musical that captures the nuances and complexities of everyday life. " After director Trevor Nunn introduced him to the Irish composer Shaun Davey, Nelson traveled to Dublin and began casting around for a suitable book. " When I re-read ‘The Dead,’ I realized that the story is full of music. Nearly all of the characters are musicians or music teachers. The story centers on a musical evening, and the plot hinges on a song. "

Although Davey liked the idea of setting " The Dead " to music, he and Nelson didn’t want to duplicate the mordant mood of John Huston’s film. " It’s a brilliant film, but it was directed by a man who was dying, " Nelson explains. " The film is very much a musing about death, very dark that way. But the story was written by a 26-year-old man who was musing on life, not on death. Once Shaun and I realized that, we both found a very different feel in the story, we were on our way. Of course, people thought we were crazy, even people who didn’t know the story. ‘The Dead: The Musical’ isn’t the best of titles. We had some problems, so things took a while. "

Indeed, the show did not see the light of a stage till 1999, but it drew crowds both on Broadway and on national tour. " People who know the story seem to think we honor it very well. Edna O’Brien, who’s a great Joycean, saw the show twice and said how much she loved it. It surprised a lot of people like that. "

Nelson lifts a lot of the musical’s dialogue directly from the story. " Most of the words on the stage are Joyce’s. Because the story is written in the third person, we turn the main character, Gabriel Conroy, into a narrator who speaks directly to the audience and describes things just as Joyce did. " To heighten the drama, he hints early on at the revelation Joyce leaves until the end, and he adds one character and expands another.

Like the story, he says, the musical is " made up of small moments that reveal the details of life and the complexity of small things. The play has been described by many people as like looking through a keyhole or a half-open door at a very rich event. " That event is a Dublin Christmas party held every year by two maiden aunts and their niece, all music teachers, for relatives and friends. " It’s a family gathering like any other, where you have all sorts of people and conflicts that have great history behind them. With countless small plots and details, the show celebrates the depth and complexity of everyday life. "

James Joyce’s The Dead is presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Boston University Theatre September 7 through October 14. Tickets are $12 to $62; call (617) 266-0800.

 

Issue Date: September 6 - 13, 2001