Joyce's Dublin comes alive on stage in Volta Theatre's new production

Irish Post

11-07-2025

THE Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith will host the UK premiere of two compelling stage adaptations from James Joyce's short story collection Dubliners this weekend.
Counterparts and A Little Cloud will run at the west London venue today, Friday, July 11 and tomorrow Saturday, July 12.
Presented by Volta Theatre Company, the double bill offers an intimate, affecting portrait of early 20th-century Dublin, with live period music enriching the atmosphere.
Jim Roche and Liam Hourican star in the Volta Thetre Company production
Performed by Jim Roche and Liam Hourican, who also adapted and directed the production, these "slices of life" explore themes of paralysis, yearning, and quiet desperation—hallmarks of Joyce's early work.
In Counterparts, a frustrated law clerk spirals into a night of drink-fuelled rage. Farrington, the protagonist, is humiliated by his boss.
Unable to assert himself at work, he seeks solace in the pubs of Dublin, drinking heavily and boasting to friends. In the story Joyce paints a bleak portrait of masculine insecurity, paralysis and cyclical abuse. The story is evoked beautifully but disturbingly by Roche and Hourican.
In A Little Cloud, a melancholic office worker is stirred to bitterness by a reunion with a more successful friend.
Joyce's story follows Little Chandler, a timid Dublin clerk who reunites with his old friend Gallaher, now a worldly journalist living in London.
Their meeting triggers Chandler's envy and self-doubt. While Gallaher boasts of his freedom and exploits abroad, Chandler is left brooding over his own constrained life — his poetry ambitions abandoned, his dull routine, and his sense of entrapment in marriage and fatherhood.
The double bill opens this evening
The show, which recently enjoyed a sell-out run at Bewley's Theatre in Dublin, has been praised for bringing Joyce's characters vividly to life.
Irish Times columnist Frank McNally described it as 'a superb dramatised introduction to one of the greatest short-story collections in world literature'.
Writing in the Irish Independent, Katy Hayes said the production was 'a delightful pair of stories… beautifully dramatised.'
The stories are accompanied by live music from acclaimed Irish musicians Feilimidh Nunan (keyboard and violin) and Conor Sheil (clarinet), both of whom regularly perform with Ireland's leading orchestras and in theatre, film and jazz ensembles.
Volta Theatre was founded by Roche and Hourican, long-time collaborators in Irish theatre and television.
Hourican's stage credits include the Old Vic and Shakespeare's Globe, while Roche has appeared in Normal People, Harry Wild, The Tudors, Dead Still, and many more.
The 60-minute show is suitable for ages 12+. About Dubliners
FIRST published in 1914, Dubliners is James Joyce's groundbreaking collection of fifteen short stories depicting ordinary life in the Irish capital at the turn of the 20th century. Written in a spare, realist style, the stories explore themes of paralysis, routine, missed opportunity, and quiet despair — all under the looming shadow of colonialism, religion, and societal expectation.
Joyce's characters range from timid schoolboys and worn-out housewives to failed revolutionaries and frustrated civil servants. Despite their modest surroundings and everyday struggles, they are drawn with extraordinary psychological depth. The collection opens with childhood tales like The Sisters and An Encounter, progresses through adolescence and maturity in stories such as A Little Cloud and Counterparts, and culminates in The Dead, widely regarded as one of the finest short stories ever written in English.
At the time, Dubliners was considered controversial for its unflinching portrayal of Irish life, and publishers were wary of its frankness. But today it is celebrated for the very qualities that once made it difficult to print: its honesty, precision, and emotional subtlety. With Dubliners, Joyce laid the foundation for modernist fiction — and painted a portrait of Dublin that still resonates more than a century later.
The Volta Theatre Company has a resonance with The Volta Electric Theatre Ireland's first dedicated cinema. store.
In the early 1900s, demand for moving pictures was fierce and cinemas were springing up all over the world. After living in Trieste, James Joyce was determined to bring cinema to Ireland, so after receiving the backing of his Italian[1] friends, he set up the Cinematograph Volta on Mary Street, Dublin.
Counterparts & A Little Cloud, Fri 11 July - Sat 12 July 2025 at Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith. Presented by Volta Theatre Company. Running time: 60 minutes | Age guidance: 12+. Click here for tickets.