“Bad news,” she deadpans. “I’m dead.”
The elderly woman sitting before us in this piece by the US company Mabou Mines is Lucia Joyce, daughter of James. Lucia spent her formative years in poverty, was dragged around Europe (making her “illiterate in four languages”), chose the eloquence of modern dance over words, was incarcerated at 28 and spent the remaining 47 years of her life in a mental institution.
It’s a fascinating story, but one not fully realised in this piece. Written and directed by Sharon Fogarty, it draws on Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, which was in turn influenced by the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a guide to the afterlife. Lucia has created her own book of the dead, but then she has been dead to the world for almost half a century, living only within the pages of her father’s novel. Her idiosyncratic way of expressing herself, in a “portmanteau language”, was a significant influence on Joyce’s experimental prose. But who is the shadowy figure in the corner of the stage, sometimes benign but sometimes sinister? Has he come to set her free or gobble her up?
Maria Tucci’s Lucia resembles an American matron more than a European free spirit, but despite some uncertainties on opening night, Tucci captures something wayward and childlike in her, floating on her chair above her own memories as hazy projections wash over the stage in waves. The best moment comes when printed words cover the entire stage and the body of Lucia like a shroud.
But the production, clearly a labour of love intended to allow a silenced woman to speak, is too often merely illustrative of Fogarty’s research. It is only fitfully engaging, as it struggles to meld biography, symbolism and snippets from Finnegans Wake into a meaningful theatrical package that gives voice to Lucia’s inner life and thwarted dreams of being an artist.
• At Theatre Royal, Brighton, until 9 May. Box office: 0844-871 7627.
