Joyce's alter ego Dedalus in full flight on stage

Director Jimmy Fay has been a fan of James Joyce since his teens, when he read the partly autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Fay says there is theatricality in the story of Stephen Dedalus, a fictional alter ego of Joyce. Fay is directing a stage adaptation of the novel, by writer, Tony Chesterman, for the New Theatre in Dublin. After a critically acclaimed run there last year, Fay is bringing the play to Cork’s Everyman Theatre on March 3.

Fay has cast a woman, Lauren Farrell, as Stephen Dedalus. “There’s a kind of vulnerability about her, an innocence and an intelligence. The book is experimental, so to do a straight adaptation of it would be impossible. You have to find a way in. In theatre, the more experimental a piece is, the more you try to engage the audience in an emotional and intellectual way. There is no difficulty in having Lauren play Stephen,” Fay says.