2 days ago
Re: Joyce - Ulysses returns to the RTÉ airwaves for Bloomsday
Drama On One's Kevin Reynolds introduces the legendary RTÉ production of James Joyce's Ulysses, performed by the Radio Éireann Players, which returns to the airwaves for Bloomsday.
It's the most wonderful day of the year ~ well for Joyceans anyway. This Monday, June 16th (for the fifth year running) RTÉ Radio 1 Extra will broadcast the 1982 complete recording of James Joyce's Ulysses. The broadcast starts at eight o'clock in the morning.
This cultural jewel is RTÉ's unique contribution to the annual Bloomsday celebrations. Of course, Ulysses is available all year at the James Joyce on RTÉ Drama on One carousel, but nothing compares to the communal excitement of a Bloomsday broadcast.
James Joyce's Ulysses was rehearsed, recorded and performed by the Radio Éireann Players ~ the first full-time radio repertory company in the English-speaking world. The director was William Styles, a former actor from New Zealand who had trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) before moving to Dublin to work with Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammóir at The Gate Theatre. From February 1981 until June 1982, Willie worked on Ulysses with sound engineer Marcus Mac Donald, a colleague who shared his enthusiasm, his fastidiousness and his appetite for experimentation in sound.
The cast are exquisite. The main narrator is Conor Farrington, an actor whose gentle erudition and sensitivity to the text made him the ideal guide for the listener. Bloom is played by Ronnie Walsh. Denis Staunton of The Irish Times (then a 20 year-old actor playing a number of small parts including Ned Lambert and Lyster, the Quaker librarian) called this "a cunning piece of casting ... that turned the actor's opaqueness to an advantage in the role of Everyman". Patrick Dawson played Stephen Dedalus and Pegg Monahan, who had been in the company since the day it was founded in 1947, was Molly Bloom.
The 1982 complete recording of James Joyce's Ulysses is both unique and evergreen. It richly rewards re-listens. Every year a new generation discovers this audio treasure. John Phipps writing a review in The Spectator in 2022 entitled "Don't read Ulysses; listen to it", referring to the production as a "radio masterpiece that respects the listener's intelligence". It's now available free online to listen to any time you want ~ and it needs to be. According to an Irish Times editorial published in 1982, "When the seamless broadcast ended, many listeners must have discovered withdrawal symptoms," the editorial said. "It was as good as that, as pervasive as that, as addictive as that. There's not a prize worthy of it, taking the idea, the execution and the performance all together."
