Circe — Chapter 15

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

One hundred years ago, James Joyce took Leopold Bloom on a rollercoaster pilgrimage closely identified with Homer’s Odysseus’s visit to the sorceress Circe in The Odyssey.

Thomas Borrillo as Blazes Boylan and Terry Burnsed as Leopold Bloom in Geminal Stage Denver’s production of Circe — Chapter 15.

To commemorate Bloom’s June 16, 1904 hallucinatory trek, through Dublin’s “Nightown” redlight district in search of his symbolic son Stephen Dedalus, Germinal Stage Denver’s Executive Director, Ed Baierlein adapted Chapter 15 for the stage.

With an outstanding cast, a near bare stage and mood enhancing lighting, it works as an amazing, thrilling energetic astonishing experience.

Because of its explicit sexual content, Joyce’s Ulysses was banned in the United States until 1933.

As mandatory reading in college, I don’t know which was more fun: grappling with Joyce’s stream of consciousness always looking for the “forbidden fruit,” or watching the professor stumble, by his own admission, through the text he’d never read, and didn’t know anymore than his sophomore class did.

According to Baierlein’s wife, Sallie Diamond, it took him only a month to write the adaptation. According to cast members Thomas Borrillo and Catherine Duquette, the cast and company went through an odyssey of their own piecing together the scenarios and the meaning behind the fast-paced scenes. There can be an advantage having to wait in the theatre parking lot for AAA to arrive to change a flat tire.

With period costumes designed by Diamond, and the ensemble sharing the narration by eight members of the ensemble, the fast-paced, spellbinding story unfolds with only the barest of stage amenities and props.

Actor Terry Burnsed wears Bloom’s mantle, giving a memorizing performance as the audience is invited to peak inside the mind of Bloom as he battles his demons through real and imaginary obstacles, following Dedalus and his friend Lynch. Bloom compelled, feeling a strong kinship for the young teacher, and wanting to protect him.

Petra Ulrych, Tad Baierlein, Borrillo, Diamond, Suzanna Wellens, Duquette, Eric Victor, and Baierlein complete the cast who play more characters each than Bloom has hallucinations. Several things flaunt themselves through Bloom’s tortured mind as he trails Dedalus. He is aware of his wife’s sexual encounter with concert promoter Blazes Boylan that afternoon. A hidden agony follows Bloom, revealed with poignancy at the very end, the memory of the death of his 11-day-old son, Rudy, 11 years prior.

Baierlein has added a synopsis in the program of the quicksilver events. If the meaning at the moment becomes allusive, let it be. It will only prove to be an insignificant, nonchalant worrisome mind boggler.

Stage direction feels choreographed with its exhaustive but smooth stylized movement. The ensemble works so closely, they appear as an entity of one.

Stream of consciousness is not easy to deal with, but certainly not impossible. For fun and insight before going, take a day and monitor your own thoughts know as they flit with ease from one topic to another. They could care less about time/space boundary. It will amuse and entertain, as well as assist in running with Bloom’s escapades.

Ulysses’ travels are legendary. Bloom’s thought-wanderings are classic. Who else but Ed Baierlein would attempt to celebrate Bloomsday, June 1, 1904 on stage? It’s a marvel, and to miss this production would be to miss a spectacular stage experience by an astonishing cast of actors traipsing through humor, pathos, fear, joy, and revelation.