James Joyce Goes to China

This programme contains some strong language.

"I'm as good an Irishman as him

"and I want to see all classes and creeds being able to live well

"if they work.

"Count me out.

"I mean, work in the wider sense, writing for the newspapers,

"both the brain and brawn belong to Ireland.

"You suspect..."

..that I may be important because I belong to Ireland,

but I suspect that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me.

You confuse me.

We can't change the country.

Let us change the subject.

My wife, the prima donna,

taken a few years since.

A handsome picture.

At what o'clock did you dine?

Sometime yesterday.

Day before yesterday.

It's stuffy here.

You just come with me and talk things over.

The thing is to walk and you'll feel a different man.

It's not far. Lean on me.

Yes.

When you do "a cut, a cut"... Oh, that's a good idea.

..and then she'll just come round here.

I'll see that and just get on it.

Mary and Maeve. Yeah. Can you be back about ten to two?

We'll have a little practice at pulling the bed back.

'In the spring of 2015,

'we were rehearsing our adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses.

'We've been invited to tour the play to China

'and, for a small theatre company like ours,

'this was an amazing opportunity and challenge.'

Oy, oy!

Look at that!

We had already toured Ulysses around Scotland and Ireland in venues

a similar size to the Tron,

but I was aware during those final rehearsal moments that this

intimate piece of theatre would be playing to some very large venues

in China, and, for us, this was all new territory.

SHE BARKS

# O sanctissima

# O piissima. #

I also couldn't help thinking what the Chinese audience

would make of this bold, bawdy and, at times, shocking play.

'Opening night in Shanghai.

'The performance has been sold out for a few weeks now,

'which is a great start.

'But first, a press conference -

'a chance for me to explain what the play is all about.'

So, there you have it. We are here now.

It's a crazy book and it's a crazy production with the philosophy...

I took the philosophy that you can do anything you want on stage

and hopefully we've achieved that.

Looks great, doesn't it?

Love that. That will be so much easier.

You just feel acoustically straight away...

As you know, it's been a challenge getting this production

up and running in the first place.

It's been tremendous for us to have it here

and actually have it documented.

Every single show I've ever done, all I've got a record of

are a few production photographs and nothing else,

so to actually have the whole thing documented is very exciting.

'Ulysses is the story of one man's journey through Dublin

'on June 16th 1904.'

The first night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's...

'This man, Leopold Bloom, visits funerals, pubs, his workplace,

'the seashore, a brothel and finally to bed with his wife Molly,

'who he knows has been having an affair

'with the unscrupulous Blazes Boylan.'

That's good, actually, you going through the middle.

It's a nice picture, actually. Good.

'It's also a story of the lost love of the Blooms,

'the grief for their dead son Rudy,

'the anti-Semitism that Bloom confronts daily

'and his concern for another young Dubliner, Stephen Dedalus.

'Our stage adaptation takes audiences on

'a journey through this great 20th century novel.'

When I read Ulysses first, I was a teenager,

and I was told that it was a dirty book

which is why all teenagers read Ulysses,

and then we realise it's not as dirty as we think it is.

When I read it properly, I was 18 or 19,

and Leopold Bloom seemed like a relatively old man of 38,

and then when I came to adapt it for the stage first,

I was 36 and we were contemporaries,

and there was a whole understanding of him this other way.

And then, when I sat down with you and we actually began to pare back

that adaptation, sort of make a new play from it,

I was 53 and he was 38 and I envied him his relative youth,

so he had changed from being an old man to being

a young man as the play went on.

That's the great thing about Ulysses.

It's a book you can reread over and over again throughout your life

and each time, you have a different understanding of it

based on where you are in your life at that time.

Dream it all again.

Leopold Bloom.

When I was first asked to adapt Ulysses for the stage, I said no.

I was terrified.

I sat down with the director and I said, "No, this cannot be done.

"Absolutely there was no way. Only a lunatic would do it.

"The only possible way you could do it..."

I took out a pen and I said,

"If you possibly broke up Molly's soliloquy,

"because this itself is such a tour-de-force single one-woman show

"that it's a play in itself."

Yes, because he never did a thing like that before

as asked to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs

since the City Arms Hotel

when he used to pretend to be laid up to make himself interesting

to that old faggot Mrs Riordan!

I was against having it at the back of the play,

at the back of the book.

If you actually had Molly's soliloquy at the beginning

of the play, if it began with Bloom getting into bed, falling asleep,

if Molly's soliloquy commenced,

and then if Bloom could drift in and out of Molly's soliloquy

and could relive the day backwards, if the characters could become,

with that illogical logic of a dream,

they could move him around throughout his whole day.

Molly could perpetually commentate upon what's happening

at the same time as this action was going on.

I explained this to a theatre director

and then I left the restaurant

having somehow signed the contract to adapt it,

having told him that it was impossible to adapt.

Anyhow, love it's not, or he'd be off his feed thinking of her

so either it was one of those night women

or some little bitch he's got in with on the sly

and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide it.

Do you remember our first meeting when I had to come over and

have a chat and I decided to bring Muireann over with me. Molly Bloom.

I thought, "She'll be the clincher."

I wish some man or other would take me sometimes when he's there

and kiss me in his arms.

There's nothing like a kiss.

Long and hot down to your soul.

The real deal clincher was... Writers always multi-task,

so I actually had to buy three pairs of jackets and two pairs of trousers

in a very dodgy warehouse at the same time as discussing this.

So, basically, the discussion, as I remember,

consisted of who would direct the show, who would be in the show.

"Did my bum look big in this? Does this jacket fit me?"

The choice of jacket might have clinched it actually.

Certain jackets I thought you looked right in.

Actually, I signed the contract

before I realised none of the jackets fitted,

which was a bit of a drawback, but a contract's a contract.

I wonder if Boylan was satisfied with me?

He came somewhere, yes, I'm sure by his appetite.

One thing I didn't like, though, his slapping my behind going away.

I'm not a horse!

When I played the Edinburgh Festival,

it was the Chinese that picked it up cos there's almost like...

It has to be a big play because it's a big story.

Well, as you know, you're never a prophet in your own land

and we're knocking on the doors of Dublin theatres

to put on James Joyce and often finding that difficult

until we were in the project eventually

and then somebody from the other side of the world

recognises something in that play

that people more locally, closer to it, don't see.

One reason why we were invited there

was not only because this theatre company,

this theatre director, Mr Yi, was enamoured by the production,

but also he's very keen to promote

a more contemporary style of theatre performance in China

and they don't have that style of theatre there.

By Jesus, I'll crucify that bloody Jew, Mam, so I will.

Are you not happy in your home, you poor naughty boy?

Who's getting it on?

Tremblin' calves.

Raw head and bloody bones.

BELL TOLLS

He's a cultured all round man is Bloom.

He's not your common or garden.

There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom.

Or, er, Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch.

The other. More in Molly's line.

"Her mouth glued on his in a voluptuous kiss,

"while his hands felt for the opulent curves

"inside her deshabille."

I'll take this one. Sweet Cecile. It's a good one.

My starting point was that the great love of Joyce's life,

Nora Barnacle, used to complain that he used to

keep her awake at night laughing as he stayed up writing it,

and there is a huge amount of humour and humanity, not just belly laughs

but with the humour of common humanity floating around the book.

Put the port and the perfume in the basket first.

Then the fruit on top.

Yes, Mr Boylan. HE CHUCKLES INDULGENTLY

Send it at once by tram.

Mrs Molly Bloom, 7 Eccles Street.

It's, er...

It's for an invalid.

Yes, Mr Boylan. I will, sir. Oh...

That for me?

Yes, Mr Boylan. HE CHUCKLES

The way you staged it in this, sort of, theatrical set

where all these possibilities were there

allowed that humour to come out

and allowed the audience, too, to come in,

and it wasn't to turn Ulysses into a comedy but it was to take away

that whole intimidation... intimidating barrier around it

so that, you know, an audience would go away and say,

"I want to go back and I want to read this book",

which is one of the truest chronicles of the human condition

written in the 20th century.

It was my brother Henry. He is my double.

I call Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist,

to give medical testimony on my behalf.

Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. CRIES OF SHOCK

Born out of bedlock, he is prematurely bald from self-abuse,

perversely idealistic in consequence...

That is rubbish.

..and...has metal teeth.

I declare him to be virago intacta.

He showed me the video of the, er, Ulysses, erm,

and then he asked me, "OK, how do you like it?"

I said, "Oh, I like it so much."

Sailed the Red Sea!

China!

The Dardanelles!

Seeing icebergs aplenty.

And then he said, erm, "OK, I'm bringing this show to China.

"Would you like to translate a script?"

I was, like, "Oh, my God, I'm so thrilled."

Of course, the translation process was not easy.

Everyone knows that Ulysses is difficult piece.

Press! Press!

Meet the gentlemen of the press!

See Bloom become...

This art, you see. "Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchants."

He wants two crossed keys at the top like that

and then the name, Alexander Keyes.

Catches the eye, you see. The House of Keyes.

Have you the design? I could get it, but it'd need just a little

bit in the paper calling attention to his shop.

You know, the usual, er, high-class licensed premises. We can do that.

Have him give us a three-month renewal.

Difficult assignment for Bloom!

I tried to, you know, erm, use the same length of the sentences

and to have some rhyme out of it so that when you read it,

you will feel the beautiful, you know, rhythm of the language.

Oh, there's a word I want to ask you.

Here. Metem...what?

Metempsychosis. And who's he now that he's at home?

It's from the Greek - the, er, transmigration of souls.

Oh, rocks! Tell us in plain words.

"The monster Maffei flung his victim from him with an oath."

Did you finish it? Yes.

But there's nothing smutty in it.

Get us another one of those Paul de Kocks.

And what was the reaction of, say,

young Chinese theatre professionals to it?

Er, they loved it.

Fast scene changes? Ah, yes.

OK. OK.

Thank you.

When you strip down, erm, the book to those three central characters

and the relationship between Molly and Bloom,

which has been destroyed...

First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure.

Yellow and black lace she wore.

Musical chairs...

They're still together but it has been damaged by the loss of a child,

the actual alienation of the young man

who knows he must leave the city.

It becomes a very universal story.

It's a story that, at its core, could be set in China,

could be set in Berlin, could be set anywhere,

and it was very interesting to actually see it go off

and be responded to by a Chinese audience.

HE SPEAKS MANDARIN

APPLAUSE

Question-and-answer sessions afterwards,

it was often commented how we went from one scene to the next.

One thing I enjoy as a director is, erm,

is making the scene changes part of the show, as it were,

to maintain the dramatic tension.

And, er, so there's lots of opportunities,

and given the surreal nature of the piece anyway, er,

the heightened sense of the novel, it was quite appropriate

to...to have a sort of...a madness of scene changes.

It was a challenge. I mean, how on earth do you stage all that?

All these settings, you know -

a bedroom, a pub, a newspaper office, a street,

a brothel - all these constantly changing situations.

Charlotte Lane, very young designer, er,

never really designed anything here before, but she had an eye,

I thought, you know, for real abs... surreal and visually dynamic work,

and we talked for ages about how we can encapsulate that in one...thing.

We thought, we must have the bed,

but that can be other things as well.

And then if we have a sense of clutter...

MOLLY SINGS

Dedalus!

There's just a sense of place, really, that's all it is,

but it's something the actors can be constantly moving around.

Ooh! I beg your pardon.

We have that vehicle, this... you know, the moving ladder,

and I don't know how that came about in some ways, but that became

incredibly important, to constantly have the energy of moving the stage.

There was a priest down here two nights ago

with his coat buttoned up.

"You needn't try to hide", I says!

Oh, I'm sure you're a spoiled priest.

He is. A cardinal's son.

Cardinal sin.

I present His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus,

Primate of all Ireland.

And the thing is that audiences, I mean,

they always know where you are just by one tiny thing.

Just by a tip of a hat or a slight gesture

or an opening of a newspaper,

suddenly you're in a different place.

And old Bloom approaches the Ormond Hotel.

Clean at last. Best value in Dublin. Sirens!

'They say in football a home crowd can be like a 12th man

'and Charlotte's set became'

an extra character on that stage and really carried it and really enraptured the audience.

The set itself charmed the audience.

To me, as a director, the scene change is part of what's going on,

and so it becomes part of the action

rather than the lights coming down and moving the furniture about.

I was just passing the time of day at Arbour Hill

and be damned but who should I see?

Only Joe Hynes off the Freeman's Journal.

I think the fact there were no rules,

that everything...anything goes basically, that was...

That style of theatre where you don't have to adhere to any

particular way and do whatever you want.

Henry!

Leopold! It is I, your Martha. Clear my name!

Come to the station.

No, no, worshipful master. Mistaken identity.

Breach of promise!

My real name is Peggy Griffin. He wrote that he was miserable.

That was something that I think came across very forcibly and

which the audiences I think were, you know, certainly...

Cos we met with drama students afterwards,

I gave a talk to drama students at a drama school,

and that was something they really took on board, very much so, yeah.

HE TRIES NOTES

Seems all right.

IN DALEK VOICE: You are a credit to your country, sir,

that's what you are.

I do. What do you think?

What was the difference between playing it in China and

playing it in Glasgow or Edinburgh or Dublin or Cork or Belfast?

Er, well, the audience were Chinese!

I think...I think, erm, we were expecting very quiet audiences,

because we thought, er, they...

It was simultaneous translation, which obviously an awful lot

of the humour gets lost as a result of that.

Also it takes longer to say something in Chinese

than it does in English, so I was worried about

the bits in the translation maybe losing step

with what's being said on stage and so on.

Er, and I think, to be fair, the translation didn't convey

the humour in the same way that the tex...

How could it, really?

All the innuendo and the very colloquial dialogue and so on.

But because, erm...

That provided nonetheless a narrative,

which was very important, er, and they...

And the visually...and the physical animation of it I think was

really what charmed them.

Of course, they only knew him as well as I do.

He's not natural, begging me to give him a tiny bit cut off me drawers.

Of course, he's MAD on the subject of drawers,

skeezing at those brazenfaced things on their bicycles

with their skirts blowing UP to their navels!

O Maria santissima he did look a fool,

dreeping in the rain,

beseeching me to lift my orange petticoat.

So I lifted them a bit and I touched him on the trousers outside

to keep him from doing worse, where it was too public!

I was dying to find out was he circumcised,

he was shaking like a jelly.

They want to do everything too quick,

take all the pleasure out if it.

HE CALLS OUT IN OWN LANGUAGE

So what's...what's this gear?

I'll be stinking now.

I'll have beetles on sticks and, er, chips on the side, please.

Tickle my catastrophe!

It is. It is a tickle my catastrophe.

Molly would've liked one of those.

Molly would've liked them. Yeah...

What's green tea in Chinese?

MAN TRANSLATES

Because we have very different... many kinds of, yeah, green teas.

Those are good. These are the superstars...of green tea.

These are the rock stars of green tea!

Just like megastars!

Where did you go yesterday again? We went to the silk market.

Mary was in her...in her own form of heaven, bartering.

And would they be like... You'd offer, like, a euro,

and they'd be like, "Aaaaahh!" Like freaking out.

It was brilliant. "Me give you best price!"

"Ah, you're breaking my heart!" Yeah, "Best price for lady."

"Ah, lady! You're so beautiful!" They'd put it up with a calculator

and you had to go, "Ah, no. No, no."

And, "Ah, you're breaking my heart!" "Oh, no! I..."

Oh, what was it somebody said to Stevie or something,

"I've no money for ice cream!"

Yeah, they really put it on.

And then when you actually do do well, they don't do it with,

like, great humility, it's like, "You won." Yeah! "You won."

"You so clever, lady." That's the...

But you're still paying over the odds. Course you are!

They want to make you feel like you've really...

You know you're paying over the odds. Of course you do.

OK? Thank you.

That'll be 50 dollar, nice lady. For you, special price.

CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS

Totally unrehearsed.

Basket with red cover inside. Basket. There should be a stick.

Music resonates throughout Ulysses.

It obviously resonates in certain chapters that are built

almost like a piece of music,

but also singing and songs are perpetually there

and they're repeated and they become motifs through it.

# My girl's a Yorkshire girl

# Yorkshire through and through

# My girl's a Yorkshire girl

# Eh, by gum, she's a champion... #

What I loved about the production was that you seemed to, like,

delve so much, so deeply into the music of the time

and created a wonderful score around it.

How did you make those choices, Andy?

Well, I worked with Ross Brown, who composed and devised

a lot of the music, and collaborated with him.

I mean, as you say, some of it, you know, for example,

Boylan and Molly Bloom were going to be singing La Ci Darem,

and so...we sang that.

Oh, Lord, I wanted to shout out all sorts of things,

"fuck" or "shit" or anything at all!

# Andiam! Andiam!

# Andiam! #

Let's ring it out!

BOTH: # Andiam, andiam, mio bene

# A ristorar le pene

# D'un innocente amor. #

Oh, my God.

We've just done the song and they feel like it's really loud. Loud?!

I'm sorry. So I just wondered if they wanted to do it again.

You need to get a proper opera singer next time you're doing this.

Oh, Lord, I wanted to shout out all sorts of things,

"fuck" or "shit" or anything at all!

# Andiam! Andiam!

# Andiam!

BOTH: # Andiam, andiam, mio bene

# A ristorar le pene

# D'un innocente amor. #

And there were parts of Latin Mass and so on which we sang and so on.

# O sanctissima

# O piissima

# Madre nostra, Maria! #

What I didn't want to go down, though, was the road of

fairly more conventional Irish music, cos I thought this is

not a conventional piece,

and you say the universality of the piece,

and because the...this style of theatre was influenced by a lot of

East European...I wanted that to be reflected in some of the music.

AVANT-GARDE MUSIC PLAYS

That mad scene-change music was very much me working with Ross to

come up with things which just had a fairly wild edge to them.

While at the same time having a period feel about them,

it wasn't...it couldn't be placed as Irish.

Thanks, Andy.

I'll show you how this works.

Line one. Well, you press "English" first.

Military Museum...

Which one are you pressing? I pressed line one. Sorry, sorry.

I'll go back.

Packed!

I'll tell you a story.

I went for a run around by the military museum

where I was staying before, and I was going for just a jog,

and as I was running past the military academy,

the brass band were all out there - wonderful regalia -

and they were just tuning up. Did they have trumpets?

They had everything. And they were just tuning up, and listen,

the first tune they played, do you know what it was?

God Save The Queen. SHE LAUGHS

Amazing. So, obviously, I was rooted to the spot. I couldn't move.

They knew you were there. I'd like to think they saw me coming.

Where are we going? We're going out. We're going out of the tube station.

That sponger!

Cursing that sponger's the lowest pits.

That sponger was making free with me

after the Glencree dinner.

Coming back!

There's nae room... SHE LAUGHS

OK?

Good. That's fine, that's good.

It strikes me that the arrival here of Joyce's Ulysses comes as

the culmination of quite a long history of his gradual

reception and assimilation to this country's culture.

It all began in 1922,

when, soon after the initial publication in February of

that year of Joyce's Ulysses in Paris,

someone in China whose name remains unknown ordered ten copies

of the book, and Joyce immediately responded in

a letter to one of his friends, "Ten copies to Peking",

very excited that it seemed that his book,

which was having so much difficulties in getting

published in Europe and had already been banned in America,

was being received so positively elsewhere.

I tried with a banana.

But I was afraid it might break and get lost up me somewhere,

because they once took something down out of

a woman that was up there for years, covered in limesalts.

LAUGHTER

In 1979, the first translation is commissioned from an artist called

Jin Di, and he sets to work with many qualms on this translation,

which he thought was beyond him because the book was too long

and too abstruse.

He wasn't sure that he understood it and

he had almost no access to any of the Western criticism that

had been published.

When he did, it was quite hard for him to come to terms with it,

for many different reasons.

But he took on the challenge,

and in 1996 his translation came out in two volumes, and that point

marks an important turning point in China's reception of Ulysses.

The book turns out to be a bestseller,

at least by the standards of Western literature in China.

Murphy's the name. Sea dog! What might yours be?

Dedalus. Do you know Simon Dedalus? I've heard of him. He's Irish.

All Irish! All too Irish.

And one of the things that I think Chinese people are most

interested in about the book is this idea that Leopold Bloom

is an everyman who encapsulates

a kind of universal wisdom about how we should live.

I resent violence or intolerance in any shape of form.

A revolution must come on the due-instalments plan.

All these wretched quarrels!

It's supposed to be about honour and flags.

It's money at the back of everything, greed and jealousy.

They accuse Jews. Not a vestige of truth.

Spain decayed when the Inquisition hounded them out,

and England prospered when that ruffian Cromwell imported them,

because they're practical.

I'm as good an Irishman as him,

and I want to see all classes and creeds being able to live well.

Jin Di, the translator of Ulysses,

likened the wisdom that could be derived from Leopold Bloom

and his day-to-day thinking about his own problems

as the kind of wisdom encapsulated in the writings of Confucius.

HE CHANTS IN LATIN

Makes him feel important to be prayed over in Latin.

Father Coffey, with a belly on him like a poisoned pup.

What swells him up that way?

Must be an infernal lot of bad air around here.

He must be fed up, shaking holy water over

all the corpses they trot up, every mortal day a fresh batch -

middle-aged men, children, women dead in childbirth,

consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts.

He says Dignum is going to paradise. Hm!

Well, he has to say something!

From what I can tell, Chinese people are very interested in this idea

that Leopold Bloom is a universal man to whom current audiences and

future audiences will always be able to relate,

and in this, their attitude to him and to his wife, Molly Bloom,

and to the other characters in the book is really replaying

the West's own reception of Ulysses.

This is how people first found a foothold in the book,

a way of making their way through its incredibly difficult maze of

very confusing literary fabric was to find the human story, and that,

it seems to me, is what's happening in this play as it's been adapted

and the easiest way for the Chinese

to begin to understand the other things that the book also does.

Money in the biscuit tin.

Yep. Drawer with three sizes of dustpan and a small brush. Yep.

Three with seven pints, three empty pint glasses,

one bottle of Coke...

Boylan's comb, large coin, Boylan's top hat...

Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors.

I expressly told you my tights must always be the right way, inside out!

I don't do tights.

It's so difficult! They're no' in my contract.

Why don't you try a few voices? Let's think. Erm...

Er...

Let's just try the top of the Ormond Hotel scene. OK?

Right?

Am I awfully sunburnt, Miss Kennedy?

I asked that old fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin.

Miss Douce, don't remind me of him, for mercy's sake!

For your what, Cissy? CISSY LAUGHS

Imagine being married to a man like that.

Oh, saints above, I'm all wet! Miss Douce, you horrid thing!

Saying such things in the public bar of the Ormond Hotel!

And what did the doctor order today, Mr Dedalus?

Er, I'll have a small glass of water and a drop of whiskey.

Certainly. OK?

Good. Nice acoustics today.

Now, I warn you that Shanghai,

you had an awful lot of people who spoke English, you know,

cos in Shanghai they do.

In order to get work they all learn English.

Here, it's much more a Chinese-speaking community.

At the same time, it is more of a theatre community.

Now, I've been told that the language,

because there was a lot of problems with the licence for everywhere

outside of Beijing, some of the language was modified on the text.

But that, apparently, will be put back now in Beijing. Whoa...!

The language of Ulysses is...

He was the first writer to really use the language of the street

to really reflect how people spoke,

and some of it is still quite shocking to a Dublin audience.

Yeah. I saw people in Dublin leaving.

I saw people looking pale.

But what was the reaction in China

to some of the more graphic aspects of Molly's speech

and of the actual general plot itself?

Well, we were obviously dependent on the translators being

faithful to it, and I think they modified the language in

certain cities where censorship was severer.

If the fella you want isn't there, sometimes, for the Lord God,

I was thinking would I go round there by the quays

some dark evening, where nobody'd know me,

and pick up a sailor off the sea that'd be hot on for it and

not care a pin whose I was, only to do it off up on a gate somewhere,

one of them wry-looking gypsies in Rathfarnham,

that blaggard-looking fella with the fine eyes, peeling a switch,

attack me in the dark and ride me up against a wall!

We all know that Ulysses has a lot of description

on the sexual activities and all that,

and when I did the translation I was thinking

whether I should put it sort of in a milder way, you know,

to make sure that the audience would take it.

YES!

Because he must've come three or four times with that tremendous,

big, red brute of a thing he has.

I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst.

Though his nose is not so big.

It's also OK, because people are not used to discuss these kind of

topics in a public place, like in a theatre house,

but this is Ulysses, and we all know that it is a great piece

we should at least learn to appreciate.

After my hours of dressing and perfuming,

it was like some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time.

He must have eaten oysters. He was in great singing voice!

No, I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of

that to make you feel full up!

He must have eaten a whole sheep after.

What's the idea of making us like that with

a big HOLE in the middle, like a stallion driving it up into you?

Because that's all they want out of you.

In Beijing, it was much more exactly as it should have been,

and they were proud of the fact that this contemporary theatre

company had invited us over and the contemporary audiences

were coming there in Beijing and wanted to see it as it should be.

But obviously, things get lost in translation, but, yeah,

I mean, certainly explicit moments and masturbation

with the paper popping out of a gun and all these type of things

always got a laugh.

Everyone shouted to look,

and something queer was flying about through the air,

a soft thing, to and fro.

A long Roman candle over the church, up and up, almost out of sight.

Ahhh...!

So that she had to lean back more.

And you could see her other things, too!

A full view, like no-one ever,

and then a rocket burst and it was like...

EXPLOSION

SHE YELLS

Everyone cried in raptures as it gushed out -

a stream of rain, gold, hair, threads, falling with golden...

Oh, so lovely!

I think things are rapidly changing in China.

I think there is nonetheless a certain modesty, by all means,

and certainly there were people who were quite -

even young people - who were quite embarrassed.

You could see in the audience they were quite embarrassed by

certain things, more the physical...

Molly writhing about the bed and so on and this type of thing.

But, I mean, nobody walked out.

I like my bed.

Judging from the audience that we have attracted so far,

it is an interesting phenomenon.

We just realised that we've attracted more intellectuals

than theatre people, actually.

And we speculated one reason might have been

that it's James Joyce, it's Ulysses.

Not too many people will have been familiar with it,

will have read it before they had come to the production.

APPLAUSE

I think this was really quite difficult for someone who

hasn't read the book to follow,

but the book is really difficult to follow,

so maybe in that sense it's doing the right kind of thing.

I've never read the book, and especially the beginning part,

the first part of this play,

it's really hard to comprehend what's going on!

Yeah. But I find that the acting is fantastic, and it's fascinating

that these people, they can play so many parts at the same time

in a single play.

I wonder whether you've got a sense of what the book is about from this.

Well, as I've said, the second part of the play,

it's a little bit easier to understand after your

explanation during the interval time.

I will definitely read the book after this play. Yeah.

'There was one city, unfortunately, that didn't give a licence for it,

'Nanjing, but they're quite a conservative old city, apparently.'

'Was that based on the viewing of the...?'

'That's right, yeah. That must have been it, yeah.

'But the thing is that I always kept telling myself,

'every single word in that play was from James Joyce, as you say,

'and the fact is, the book itself, unedited,

'you can buy in Chinese in a bookshop in China.

'So if they've got the books on sale,

'why can't they have the theatre piece on stage?'

Don't tell anyone! It's a secret. Onto the cart, now!

Stand us a drink yerself,

and your pockets hanging with gold and silver!

There's a Jew for yer! Cute as a shithouse rat.

Jew! Jew! Three cheers for Israel!

Bloom goes to a pub in Little Britain Street,

and there he meets the Cyclops, he meets the citizen,

he meets the most bigoted, biased bollocks of an Irish Republican

you could ever meet.

Bloom is a Jew, Bloom is not Irish, and actually he has a row,

because Bloom uses logic

and all those things that are quite useless in any pub argument.

And Karl Marx. And Spinosa.

And the Saviour was a Jew, and his father was a Jew. Your God...

We have no father. That'll do, now. God was a Jew! Your God was a Jew!

Christ was a Jew, like me!

By Jesus, I'll crucify the bloody Jew!

I'll kill him! Get off me!

I'll kill him! I'll kill him!

It's been extraordinary, actually.

I think I maybe told you that in Shanghai, on the second day,

when they released tickets...

If they had any returns,

any spare tickets on the day of the show itself,

they would sell them for only a fiver each.

And people were queuing up from 4:30 in the morning.

On the second day of Shanghai.

Here, of course, completely sold out as well.

I have asked, to make a special request

for mobile phones to be switched off, generally switched off.

That is made anyway.

But then people just... It's a habit.

It's not a question of taking a phone call,

it's having to sit in there flicking through things.

There's a different culture in Chinese audiences which,

actually, I found frustrating at times.

They are not used to sitting quietly for a couple of hours.

Chinese Theatre has come through Chinese opera

which lasts for ten hours and people come in and out.

Who was the letter from? Boylan, he's coming at four.

He is bringing the programme.

What time is Dignum's funeral?

Every theatre, we had people coming in late, people on their phones...

And these are people who spent weeks trying to get tickets for it.

You would think they'd be... But it's just...

They didn't understand that no,

you're meant to sit absolutely silent.

APPLAUSE

THEY CHUCKLE

That, do you think that will work? In terms of timing?

Mr Yi decided, in addition to inviting Ulysses to come to China

to do a tour, also to invite Andy to come to Beijing and

engage in a collaborative project with local Chinese actors.

And it means that Nora can say her lines to you there. Directly.

HE TRANSLATES

I was working with a group of young Chinese actors and to be honest,

young Chinese actors are no different

from young Scottish actors.

Or actors from any other part of the world.

They have the same self-doubt, the same arrogance, sometimes.

You can tell who can act and who can't.

They are also totally committed to what they want to achieve

on stage and they know what the disciplines are.

You know, Andy looks fierce, for the Chinese eye, at least.

He looks very intense.

Look. Telling them about the light.

And then going off. It'll just make it...

Adds to the urgency of it, I think.

HE TRANSLATES

Our colleagues in the West, in the theatre community,

should keep in mind that auditions are a fairly rare phenomenon, here.

We cast our characters, our actors and actresses in a different way.

Not through open auditions,

but mostly through personal relationships.

But for Andy, they are not familiar.

They don't have any measure of familiarity with how actors work

and what sort of actors we have here.

Things of that sort.

So we held open auditions.

Those were two exhausting days for Andy.

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

'What they weren't familiar with was my particular style of performance.

'But that's no different from some British actors, to be honest.'

We need to compensate for the fact that suddenly

it's coming from back there...

'Once they realised what I wanted to do with it,

'where I wanted to take the play, once they could say how it was

'evolving, then they were totally on board and they committed in it.

'And by the end of that process, I was working with them in exactly

'the same way as I would be working with a group of British actors.'

When they walk... The thing of them...

The acting tradition here is very...

Tends towards realism and naturalism.

So, given the style of theatre that Andy is in love with,

that Andy has been doing, I guess for most of his life, um...

that was the obstacle that we had to...that we had to overcome.

In Andy's words,

that required a leap of faith on the part of the actors.

They had to really have that strong sense of belief in Andy's style,

in this end product that we're going to see

at the end of the three-week process.

So...so you have it there and then as soon as you move,

like on the kiss, then you're straight away into it.

OK.

When Shing gets to there, if you walk...

Andy was constantly telling everybody

to feel free to contribute, this isn't...

This is a devised piece.

And by the way, devising is a relatively new concept here, too.

We have always been used to working in a way

where there is a set script.

You may add or subtract from an existing script,

but the script is everything.

'I really enjoyed working with that Chinese cast.

'I had to work through a translator, but actually, after a while,

'you are able to communicate very quickly and visually what you

'want to achieve a lot of the time without necessarily having to

'describe it through the language.'

ANDY GIVES DIRECTIONS

I was amazed with how sensitive Andy is to language.

There is a scene where Joyce is passionately pursuing Nora Barnacle

and Nora, having been emotionally exhausted on that particular night,

says, "Well, no, not tonight. Look at how drunk you are."

And Joyce says, "Well, well."

So, in translation that is, "Hao-ba, hao-ba."

Andy picks that up, "Hao-ba, hao-ba",

and turns that into a joke

that would be delivered almost every day on particular occasions.

Hao-ba, hao-ba. HE CHUCKLES

When everybody's tired, for example, and just begging for a break...

You know, Andy insists that you have to earn your break

on the part of actors.

And then he goes, "Hao-ba, hao-ba, let's have a break."

THEY LAUGH

I don't think he would have any trouble trying to exhaust people.

For the best results, for the best stage presentation.

Unless you want... Unless you want to work further?

HE TRANSLATES

LAUGHTER

SHE SINGS IN OPERATIC STYLE

THEY SPEAK MANDARIN

APPLAUSE

Well, you all move beautifully and the opera singer...!

Yeah, I don't want her to come to see Ulysses,

because I have to sing and I'm not an opera singer!

We have no Chinese, but we knew exactly what was happening

in your head all the time.

It was really, really good. Well done! Congratulations.

I will go ...

SHE MIMES

And you can sing behind me! We can try. Yeah.

Andy! For you.

For me? Yes. Oh, goodness.

Thank you.

You're very kind.

Thank you very much.

Beautiful, yes.

Thank you. Sorry, we have to change.

Back to the hotel.

I thought it was brilliant to experience

all the very different audiences.

Yeah, they were very different. Because people say,

"It's going to be so different,

"Chinese audiences are going to be so different.

"They're going to clap slowly,

"they're going to be messing with their phones all the time."

It's just a different culture, and stuff.

But I think it's a different culture in every city.

I did...I suppose I didn't quite take on board until Beijing the pace

that people take to read subtitles.

And it really affects the playing of things.

And so, in certain parts, I can definitely feel

when they're still reading and so, without kind of holding the pace up,

you have to kind of time it and allow them the time to read it

but at the same time, the time to visually take on board

what is going on.

And, yeah, I'd say I only really got into my stride in Beijing

at working that out.

It's stuffy here.

You just come with me and talk things over.

The thing is to walk and you'll feel a different man.

It's not far.

Lean on me.

Yes.

My wife would have the greatest pleasure

in making your acquaintance.

Come.

Everybody who watched that piece who was close to it, for example,

doing the translation or the technicians and so on,

that we were working with,

they always got upset at the last piece,

Molly's soliloquy,

when she talked particularly about the funeral and the death of Rudy.

That was 11 years ago now.

I was in mourning.

Yes, Rudy would be 11.

Oh, what was the good in going into mourning for what was neither

one thing nor the other?

The first cry was enough for me.

I heard the death watch, too.

He liked me, too. I remember.

It wasn't my fault!

But I knew well I'd never have another.

Our first death.

We were never the same since.

And then, of course, her talking about her meeting her first love

with Bloom and so on,

under the Moorish wall and all that...

And the perfume, the smell of the flowers.

And rose gardens!

Jasmine and geraniums

and Gibraltar as a girl

where I was a flower of the mountain.

Yes!

When I put a rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used to...

Yes...

And how he kissed me under the Moorish wall

and I thought, well...

..as well him as another.

And then I asked him with my eyes, to ask again,

yes.

And then he asked me, would I?

Yes, to say yes, my mountain flower.

And first I put my arms around him.

Yes,

and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts.

Oh, perfume.

Yes, and his heart was going like mad and yes, I said yes, I will!

Yes!

It is so beautiful, it always moved that audience

and that's the beauty of the piece, I think, really.

Those sexual sections of the soliloquy will be contemporary

in 200 years' time

because they are rooted so much in the human condition.

They'll be as beautiful in 200 years' time and also they'll be

as shocking in 200 years' time.

That's what I think! They'll never lose that.

APPLAUSE

So, the Tron Theatre's tour of China.

Three weeks on the road, and 14,000 miles covered,

playing to packed houses everywhere.

A Journey Round James Joyce, performed in Mandarin,

enjoyed a similar experience.

But what meant most to me was the age of our Chinese audience -

mainly young people, wanting to hear the words

of this icon of Western literature,

James Joyce.

It's nice to see you again but I... I'm still worried that

in the time you've been away you've never resolved that anger,

that...that chaos inside you, that need for destruction.

We've got a mix for that.

BOTH: Ya!