{"id":31261,"date":"2025-05-21T16:26:46","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T20:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=31261"},"modified":"2025-05-21T18:57:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T22:57:33","slug":"its-a-brilliant-time-to-attend-the-united-states-vs-ulysses-at-irish-arts-center-in-light-of-current-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irishexaminerusa.com\/wp\/?p=31261","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a Brilliant Time to Attend \u201cThe United States vs. Ulysses” at Irish Arts Center in Light of Current Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Mark Lambert, Ali White, Clare Barrett, Morgan C. Jones <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Review by Brad Balfour

Play: \u201cThe United States vs. Ulysses\u201d
Playwright: Colin Murphy
Director: Conall Morrison
Cast: Clare Barrett, Ross Gaynor, Morgan C. Jones, Mark Lambert, Ali White, Jonathan White
Dates: April 30 – June 1
Where: Irish Arts Center
726 11th Avenue\u00a0

In light of the banned book movement raging throughout various right-of-center MAGA dominated states, where sexually provocative writing is being forced out of libraries and schools, this story about James Joyce\u2019s \u201cUlysses\u201d \u2014 a nearly banned book \u2014 is nothing new.\u00a0

In Nazi Germany, there were mass bonfires of books. In 1953, American writer\u00a0Ray Bradbury created \u201cFahrenheit 451,\u201d a\u00a0dystopian\u00a0novel\u00a0which presented a future American society where\u00a0books\u00a0have been outlawed and “firemen”\u00a0burn any that are found.\u00a0The novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman who does the burning. He becomes disillusioned with his role in censoring and destroying literature.

In 1922, notorious Irish author James Joyce published \u201cUlysses,\u201d his most famous work which is a major contribution to the\u00a0modernist\u00a0avant-garde\u00a0movement. Joyce is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century.\u00a0

Prior to its hardcover publication, the book was serialized in \u201cThe Little Review,\u201d a literary magazine. This periodical was published in 1920 with the “Nausic\u00e4a episode,” which contained a masturbation scene. Copies were mailed to potential subscribers. A girl of unknown age read it and was shocked, and then a complaint was made to the Manhattan District Attorney.\u00a0

Since the magazine could be purchased in a New York bookshop and the publishers of \u201cThe Little Review\u201d were based in NYC, the local district attorney brought a case against the sellers. \u201cLittle Review\u201d publishers, Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap, couldn\u2019t argue that the chapter should be considered in light of the work as a whole, since only the offending chapter was published. The court convicted and fined the duo after a trial in which one of the judges stated that the novel seemed “like the work of a disordered mind”. That stopped publication of \u201cUlysses\u201d in the United States for over a decade.

Then in 1932, Random House \u2013\u2013 a relatively new publisher which had the rights to publish the entire book in the United States \u2013- decided to bring a test case to challenge the de facto ban in order to publish \u201cUlysses\u201d without fear of prosecution. It made an arrangement to import the edition published in France and have a copy seized by the U.S. Customs Service when the ship with the work arrived. Although Customs had been told in advance of the anticipated arrival of the book, it was not confiscated. When the ship docked, it instead was forwarded to Random House in NYC.\u00a0

Since seizure by Customs was essential to the plan for a test case, Morris Ernst \u2013\u2013 the attorney for Random House \u2013\u2013 took the unopened package to Customs, demanded that it be seized. And it was. The US Attorney then took seven months before deciding whether to proceed. While the Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to assess the work’s obscenity felt that it was a “literary masterpiece,” he also believed it to be obscene within the meaning of the law. The office decided to take action against the work under the provisions of the Tariff Act of 1930. That act allowed a district attorney to bring an action for forfeiture and destruction of imported works which were obscene. It set up the test case.

It\u2019s this test case which is the focus of Murphy\u2019s play, conceived originally for radio and adapted for a full stage production. The date is December 8, 1933, and it\u2019s set in CBS Radio\u2019s New York studio, preparing to go live on air with an episode of the dramatized newsreel, \u201cMarch of Time.\u201d This time it\u2019s about the court case,\u00a0\u201cThe United States versus One Book Called Ulysses.\u201d Inside this basis of a radio broadcast, Murphy and director Conall Morrison insert two other levels of narrative, each depicted with a slightly skewed visual and dramatic style.\u00a0

In the broadcast room, as they read their script about the trial, five actors are being directed with passion. The trial has ended just a few days earlier \u2014 as has Prohibition \u2014 and the risqu\u00e9 bits of \u201cUlysses\u201d provide some saucy material. A hanging microphone, around which the actors gather, offers a focus as they make sound effects and dramatize scenes. The actors who are not speaking sit in chairs upstage, reading their scripts.\u00a0

Interwoven with the radio reenactment is a more straightforward dramatization of the events being depicted (as outlined above). Furniture shifts to the center of the stage which creates various rooms for various events to transpire. In James Joyce\u2019s Paris dining room, young publisher Bennett Cerf is there to make a publication deal. In lawyer Morris Ernst’s office, he and Cerf strategize how to make sure they get their day in court and win. Then there\u2019s the customs office, where a courier fails to get caught smuggling in the contraband book.\u00a0

And of course, there\u2019s the courtroom where the lawsuit plays out. With Ernst facing Sam Coleman in front of Judge John Munro Woolsey in Customs court, the actors make fine sparring partners. But the whole trial is pointed toward one question — will the purportedly obscene material get read in court or be dramatized onstage.\u00a0

Finally, at the moment when the radio broadcast takes its intermission, one of the actors opens up \u201cUlysses\u201d\u00a0itself, and that world opens up. Hitherto unseen portals appear in the set, as they slip into the world of Joyce\u2019s Nighttown \u2014 \u00a0and its all these things, scatological, outrageous, and abject all at once.\u00a0

We see Leopold and Molly Bloom themselves, as well as an array of other characters that Bloom encounters, sketched in Joyce\u2019s archly convoluted prose. It\u2019s in these sections that the play comes to life, when the actors let loose. The dialogue throughout the rest of the piece is scattershot, excerpted from different passages and moments.

This is less an issue in the courtroom scenes with some of it partially verbatim from the actual trial transcript \u2013\u2013 Murphy cites it as a primary source \u2013\u2013 than in the radio play sections. Nonetheless, as the various actors shift roles and characters, they try to give life to all that\u2019s happening.

There’s a play (scenes from \u201cUlysses\u201d) within a play (the court trial) within the play \u2013\u2013 that is, the radio broadcast of \u201cThe March of Time.\u201d It\u2019s a challenge to teach a modern audience what\u00a0\u201cMarch of Time\u201d\u00a0was in the first place, show how it works, and present the entire episode. The information requirements sometimes stack the dialogue to be a little stiff, even a bit fakey. It can get confusing and the switching around can cause one to lose track as to what\u2019s what.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, though, the message is clear. Yes, there can be an impulse to \u201cprotect\u201d the people\u2019s prim and proper sensibilities. But in recalling this case for free speech, it is plainly apparent how important it is that artistic freedom be protected. That is more necessary than ever.

In the dramatized sections of\u00a0\u201cUlysses,\u201d Joyce\u2019s poetry transcends any possible scatalogical offenses, both verbal and visual. Though Cerf didn\u2019t set out to be a crusader for the First Amendment, he achieved that nonetheless. The role he played in this suit meant that the company he founded \u2013\u2013 even these many years later \u2013\u2013 champions not just the commercial but the innovative. Technically, conceptually and socially: the right to freedom of speech prevailed.

The people \u2014 not the government \u2014 won back then, but so do we now. This play should be staged all throughout the United States \u2014 given that not only \u201cUlysses,\u201d but hundreds of books have been banned by Florida and Iowa along with particular towns. \u201cThe United States vs Ulysses\u201d may have been the cause back then but even today, the battle for freedom of expression goes on.<\/p>\n

Share this:<\/h3>