We went to the premiere of Conall Morrison's engaging new production of Colin Murphy's The United States vs. Ulysses, which opened on April 3rd, 2025, at the Irish Arts Center on 11th Ave and 52nd Street in New York City, and highly recommend it if you're a fan of Joyce's novel.
I'm extremely partial to Joyce—my favorite guitarist after Groucho Marx—and Ulysses is my favorite ever book, now largely (sadly) more widely unread than ever (do most Gen Zers even read? Judging by the demographic of the audience last night, apparently not). A famously "difficult" novel that needs to be absorbed at least twice before the full richness of its poetic language and design kicks in, I first stumbled across a bootleg copy way up on a shelf in our house growing up in Syracuse—a copy that my father liberated from the Zeta Beta Tau frat house at Syracuse University.
Funnily enough, this kind of random encounter with a supposedly "smutty" book sure to corrupt the impressionable youth of America is exactly what the prosecuting attorney in this courtroom drama (a play within a play couched as a March of Time CBS radio show) warns the judge of in his argument to ban the book in America after its first publication in Paris in 1922. In the early '30s, publisher Bennett Cerf aimed to publish the book in America through his newly established firm Random House, and needed a test case to refute charges that it was "obscene" once and for all. His attorney more or less smuggled an imported copy of the book into the US in plain sight of customs officials, where it was seized as pornographic literature, thus setting up this trial.
In 1934, after the conclusion of this trial, Cerf successfully published the first authorized US edition of Ulysses. The ensemble cast, imported from Ireland for this production and juggling both American and Irish accents when acting out passages from the book itself, is superb, and really gives a flavor of the impassioned controversy this revolutionary novel sparked. A reverie during a five minute courtroom break in the trial turns into an extended riff on the phantasmagoric "Circe" episode set in Dublin's "Nighttown"—and there is plenty of Molly Bloom's (then) shocking sexually frank language from her "yes I said yes I will Yes" soliloquy counterpoised with the judge's long-winded delivery of his (happy for us) verdict near the end.
Bravo to the Irish Arts Center for bringing this first-class production to NYC. The play will run through June 1st, 2025.