BLOOMSDAY CABARET: SYNOPSIS

Bloomsday Cabaret tells the story of music in the life and literature of James Joyce, one of the greatest writers of all time. Joyce was a well-respected singer with a fine tenor voice; his wife Nora famously said "Jim should have stuck to music instead of bothering with writing". Up-tight scholars throughout the years have struggled to reconcile Joyce’s complex art with his love for popular songs and music hall tunes.  But the song-list for Bloomsday Cabaret reads like a compilation of the greatest hits of 1904 - The Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, Love’s Old Sweet Song, Goodbye Sweeheart Goodbye, Sally Gardens, Finnegan’s Wake, My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl..

June 16, 2004  was the hundredth anniversary of Bloomsday, the day that Leopold Bloom, the central character of Ulysses,  set out on his odyssey through the streets of Dublin.  Ulysses is  considered the literary masterpiece of the 20th century but it is also the most musical of novels. Music is everywhere. The hearts and minds of Joyce’s characters overflow with song, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Leopold Bloom stands beside a grave and a line from Seaside Girls pops into his head: "They must breed a devil of a lot of maggots.  Soil must be simply swirling  with them.  Your head it simply  swirls.  Those pretty little seaside girls...."

The story of Joyce and music is told against a Bloomsday backdrop.  Three Canadian Joyceans - two Newfoundland performers and an opera singer from Toronto - visit Dublin on a musical mission. They join forces with the celebrated Irish singer Paul Harrington, and a group of Dublin musicians, to mount the Irish portion of the Bloomsday Cabaret.  The film opens mid-morning, on the wide seaside vista of Sandymount Strand; the singers entertains passersby with the breezy rhythms of ‘Seaside Girls’ and the pantomime weepie ‘Dublin Bay’. The band of players continues on to lunch, and a performance at fabled Davy Byrne’s Pub, where Leopold Bloom had his own very satisfactory lunch in Ulysses. They finish the day onstage at Dublin's Gaeity Theatre with a poignant

Center stage is back in St. John’s at the Cabaret itself, held at the rococo Majestic Theatre in St. John’s. Residents of Night Town crowd the curtained boxes for a rowdy evening of musical entertainment and Joycean lore.  Moulin Rouge meets Bloomsday;  black lace, can-can girls, golden curls, ruby lips, garters and corsets, top-hats and tails.

MUSIC IS EVERYWHERE