THE STORY: As Richard Watts, Jr. views: “It could not have been easy to bring within the limits of the stage this subtle and deeply introspective self-study of the education and loss of faith of a tortured literary genius. And the feat of making it dramatically interesting and meaningful for present-day theater audiences is all the greater because it is seemingly so parochial in its preoccupation with life in Dublin and its neighborhood in the period between 1882 and 1902. But when at the end Stephen Dedalus is about to leave Ireland forever, and make his famous statement that 'I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race,' you feel you have come to know the difficult young man and to accept the actuality of his stature. Obstinate, self-centered, infuriating though he can be, there is something touching about this stubborn honesty and the loneliness that he sees as his destiny."
This eloquent, engrossing and brilliantly conceived memory piece recreates the events and people surrounding the young Joyce as he emerges into manhood and prepares to depart from his native Ireland—and from a way of life and thinking which he can no longer accept.
