Ulysses by Elevator Repair Service, Commissioned by the Fisher Center, Is a New York Times Critic’s Pick

Elevator Repair Service’s Ulysses, an adaptation of the James Joyce novel commissioned by the Fisher Center at Bard, was named a New York Times Critic’s Pick. The play, staged at the LUMA Theater, “somehow manages to reduce the novel’s more than 260,000 words to 2 hours and 40 minutes with much of its humor, pathos, and bawdiness intact,” writes Jesse Green—a task that seemed almost impossible to the critic before seeing the production. “Once the principal story takes over, though, the artistry of the principal cast keeps us riveted. Knight’s face always shows what the narration tells us is happening behind it; Hoffman turns Molly’s moral, sexual, and scatological squirming into a comic symphony of complaint.” The Times praised the physical production, “which pushes Elevator Repair Service’s minimalistic maximalism, made famous 14 years ago by its eight-hour Gatz, to even further extremes,” and the costuming by Enver Chakartash, which “best express the company’s ethos—and, in doing so, Joyce’s.” Ulysses is playing now through July 14 at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College.

Read More in the New York Times

Further Reading:

• Washington Post: Ulysses is an “impossible” novel. Now—somehow—it’s also a play.

Post Date: 06-26-2024