The Arts Review​

Liam Hourican, Jim Roche and Danny Kehoe in Cyclops. Image, Al Craig **** In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king. Not because he sees the truth, but because he half sees truth. James Joyce's one eyed Citizen from The Cyclops chapter of Ulysses, a belligerent explosion of half truths, quarter lies and all prejudice. A bellicose, persecuted nationalist out to persecute other persecuted souls. In Volta Theatre's stirring Cyclops, Leopold Bloom's encounter with the

Lesley Conroy in Epiphany. Image Al Craig **** I would die for you. Lovers say it often. They may mean it; they may even believe it. But it is not a binding oath or a genuine plan. Rather, it is an attempt to give language to a feeling so overwhelming that ordinary words seem insufficient. A feeling that must, undeniably, be love. It is the memory of such a love that returns to Gretta Conroy in James Joyce’s masterpiece short story The Dead. In her youth, a delicate boy had

Teddy Moore and Peter McGann in The Whiteheaded Boy. Image: Patricio Cassinoni. *** Sometimes it’s better to let the dead rest in peace. Like Lennox Robinson's The Whiteheaded Boy. Director Annie Ryan taking Robinson's historical text and decorating it in the trappings of a nostalgic 70s sitcom. In which the class conscious Geoghegan family’s notions of middle class upperosity are focused around Mummy’s favourite boy child. A perpetual medical student siphoning off the family