A French company named Cosmos Kolej opened on Tuesday night in Galway's Town Hall Theatre with a play named Ulysse a L'Envers - Ulysses upside down - by Wladyslaw Znorko. It aims to distil something of man's struggle for survival through a highly imaginative recreation of life on the Blasket Islands, and its aftermath when the islanders were evacuated in 1953 by government decree.
It opens on one of the islands, a great heap of planks, and trapdoors through which, the people come and go, a fortress beleaguered by a cruel sea. A Spanish galleon is wrecked, yielding a stranger harvest The Titanic passes on its destined way; the U Boats tunnel through the waves to meet the Lusitania. Storms constantly engulf the island, and there is little sense of material or aesthetic reward for those living on it.
Then comes the shift to another life on the mainland, and the focus narrows to one man, named Muiris. He finds himself adrift in a town with more than a passing resemblance to Joyce's invention, for another Ulysses, of Nighttown. He cannot speak English, is mistaken for a beggar and, his appeals unheard, dies in an institution. His harsh island was kinder.
None of this is rendered in a literal way, although the storms and a luminous snowfall are realistic and eye catching. For the rest, the audience is offered pegs on which to hang its imagination. Half barrels serve as boats bobbing about the island itself is surreal; the town suggests slum, decadence and a hostile ambience. There is a little dialogue in French, and minimal offstage narration in English, but the work does not attempt to explain itself, and offers what one can take from it no more.
It is the kind of play which, like beauty, depends on the eye of the beholder, and my vision was not always perfectly aligned with that of author and company. There were scenes which seemed to stray outside the given frame of reference, and remained opaque. But the 75 minute production was never less than interesting, and had its moments of fascination; a combination which earns it full marks for effort and an honours rating for achievement.
