You’ll See...: Ulysses for kids, with a star turn from the charming, funny, knowing Helen Gregg

You’ll See...

Bank of Ireland Theatre, University of Galway

★★★★☆

Ulysses for children: has the world gone mad? However unlikely it sounds – making a simple staged version of probably the most celebrated modernist novel, complex and famously difficult to read – Branar, the inventive Galway-based theatre company for children, has gone and done it.

Part of the stellar Ulysses 2.2 collaboration, this show, revived for Galway International Arts Festival, is for children aged eight and upwards. It’s also a great crib sheet for adults who haven’t managed to get through the novel yet – which is most people, according to the actor Helen Gregg, our guide to the world of Ulysses (or You’ll See… Geddit?).

Gregg adapted the novel with Marc Mac Lochlainn, the production’s director. They take an inventive approach, Gregg addressing the audience and cruising through the central narrative from the points of view of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, explaining context, commenting on the various actions or motivations, voicing characters, singing, gesturing, dissing, pulling faces.

She pushes the action along with three giant pop-up books where each page is a meticulously created location for the action, and manipulating cardboard cutouts of Dedalus, Leopold and Molly Bloom and the dizzying number of other characters in the day’s busy narrative, whom she zips in and out of the tabletop scenes. At one stage a manually unrolled screen unfurls a Dublin streetscape. The beautiful, delicate books were designed and created by Maeve Clancy, with paper creation by Sorcha Ní Chróinín.

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As Gregg explains at the beginning, the novel is about everything but also about nothing at all, and she steers a path through the twists and turns and multiple characters and events in a brisk and entertaining 45 minutes. It’s not all in there, obviously; the structure is simplified, and there are passing references to the incidents she doesn’t get into, including the detail of the more adult bits.

The whole is surprisingly simple for such a complicated novel, and a great introduction to its appeal. Gregg is charming, funny, knowing and good crack. At the end she says the audience can take a closer look at the books and figures and ask questions. At this performance, one adult suggests inserting more farting into the narrative; Gregg agrees it’s a good idea. The children have more grown-up questions.

You’ll See... continues at Bank of Ireland Theatre, as part of Galway International Arts Festival, until Sunday, July 30th