Time to fess up. You never did get around to reading James Joyce’s epic-length “Ulysses,” did you? You meant to, but something else always came up . . . like life.
Fortunately, Patrick Fitzgerald manages to partially fill the gap with “Gibraltar,” his two-person adaptation of the literary masterpiece. Well, not the whole thing, of course. That would take the better part of a day. Rather, he concentrates on the central relationship in the book, between Leopold Bloom and his sexually frustrated wife Molly.
Fitzgerald himself movingly plays Bloom, as well as the narrator and several other minor characters, while Cara Seymour plays a gallery of roles including Molly; her lover, Blazes Boylan, and Gerty, the young woman who inspires Bloom to an act of self-gratification.
“Jesus was a bachelor and he never lived with a woman,” the narrator says early on. “Surely living with a woman is one of the most difficult things a man has to do, and he never did it.”
That ironic tone permeates the piece, which is taken largely from the original text. As such, the language is lyrical and dense, and despite the tight focus, the proceedings are still hard to follow.
As in the episode from “Ulysses,” the action takes place during a single day, when Bloom wanders the streets of Dublin engaging in a series of earthly pursuits while his wife enjoys a tryst with her lover.
The highlight, of course, is Molly’s famous soliloquy, a stream-of-consciousness reverie about her life and relationship with her husband. It’s long and bawdy — the reason the book was banned for obscenity — and Seymour turns it into a sensual tour de force.
Fluidly staged by Steppenwolf Theatre Company co-founder Terry Kinney, the piece manages to convey the essential heart of the novel while leaving room for such entertaining digressions as a description of Bloom’s diet, made up largely of “the inner organs of beasts and fowls.”
“Gibraltar,” which takes its name from Molly’s birthplace, won’t replace “Ulysses” or even the Cliffs Notes of Joyce’s book. Still, it’s an evocative telling of a classic, one that’s spurred a salute, Bloomsday — celebrated by Joyce lovers everywhere and every year on June 16.