Have you ever read a book that included a toilet visitation, a bar room brawl, an act of seduction, naughty shenanigans on a beach, lewd thoughts, adultery, a drunken orgy, and a detailed description of urinating in a back garden? And all of this happening in just one day! If you haven’t, then you haven’t read James Joyce’s Ulysses!
Strolling Through Ulysses! is a one-man show that tells the fun-filled story of Bloomsday – June 16th 1904 – the iconic day around which James Joyce’s Ulysses is based.
Written and performed by Robert Gogan, the show guides you through the curious events and quirky characters of Ulysses, in a humorous, entertaining and informative manner, with extracts from the novel which best illustrate the various aspects of Joyce’s writing – the comical, the descriptive and the complex – without compromising the integrity of the great book.
Gogan was awarded the Best Actor honour at the Galway Fringe Festival in 2019 for his performance in Strolling Through Ulysses!
In an effort to bring the novel to a wider audience he has also edited a new edition of Ulysses, which he calls Ulysses Remastered Centenary Edition. In this new edition all of the ‘streams of consciousness’ are published in italics, and standard quotation marks are used for the dialogue.
REVIEWS
Given the burnished Victorian interior of the pub, and Gogan’s pitch-perfect balancing of narrator, actor and observer, it turned out to be a wonderfully bawdy experience – and one that certainly enlivened our dinner conversation afterwards. – The Irish Independent
[Gogan] unabashedly indulges all elements of the novel including the bizarre, crude and downright filthy with the wonderful air of comedy that Joyce had no doubt intended. Joyce’s love of dark humour is not lost on Gogan, it is embraced. – Armaghi.com. February 2022
While the mere mention of ‘Ulysses’ can intimidate ….. Robert Gogan manages to distil its essence into 75 minutes of theatre laced with laughter and some pathos. With deft character changes, [he] barrels through the bawdy, earthy, carnal, no-holds-barred language of the novel which was deemed obscene when it was first serialised in the US. – Kerry’s Eye, February 2022
Gogan is an engaging and well-rehearsed raconteur. His edited selection of excerpts cut right to the heart of Ulysses ….. succeeds in making Joyce accessible even to those who have only the sketchiest context for the work The Sunday Business Post
