James Joyce’s Dubliners

Dublin Writer's Museum Until May 31. A Full Day's Epic: 10am (Sun 11am) €19/€15. A Half Day's Adventure: walks begin 10.30-11.30am or 4-4.30pm (Sun 11am- 11.30am, 4-4.30pm) €12/€10 wentertainment.ie

When James Joyce’s short story collection was chosen for this year’s One City One Book project. it seemed an obvious pick. If the city’s readers were to share the same fiction simultaneously, with the bonus of recently elapsed copyright, Joyce’s realistic vignettes of life within an enervated city made plenty of sense. Besides, although it contains one of his most enduring short stories in The Dead, Dubliners initially met with a disinterested and sometimes hostile Dublin. Frankly, we owed him.

If the city will not come to the book, though, then the book must come to the city. That is something that Alice Coglan’s Wonderland Productions is currently facilitating, by turning Joyce’s text into an audio tour, dramatising excerpts with the vocally impressive assistance of Barry McGovern, Billie Traynor and others, and cocooning us in performance via mp3 player as we retrace Joyce’s steps through Dublin.

Available as both A Full Day’s Epic (7 hours) and A Half Day’s Adventure (4 hours), which allow access to 15 Usher Island on Wednesdays and weekends, it’s a production that requires imagination, stamina and perhaps an umbrella. But, as it merges 19th-century bustle with 21st- century cacophony, its aim is that of the best fiction: to be transportative across any distance; to bring Dubliners back to Dubliners.

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