The Dead

A new play with a brief, but lively history JAMES JOYCE’S THE DEAD opened several months ago Off-Broadway for a limited engagement. Some time later, its illustrious cast is still performing to standing ovations at the Belasco Theatre.

This is a simple story that speaks to every one of us who has ever gone to a family gathering. Aunts Julia and Kate and niece Mary Jane, music teachers all, are the traditional hosts to the annual Christmas gathering with family , friends, the help, and even a ghost. Everyone shares in the festivities around the piano...singing and dancing in a familiar, ritualistic way.

The strength of the production is the sentimental pull it creates around the Christmas dinner that is the play’s focus. In adapting the short story for the stage, Playwright Richard Nelson and composer Shaun Davey, have adapted Joyce’s poetic, descriptive prose into a modern musical that’s impressionist in style and captures James Joyce’s stream of consciousness technique. "The thought-tormented music" that Joyce describes is the music we hear. And true to the stream of consciousness technique THE DEAD evokes for each of us thoughts of our own family traditions, our own deceased parents, aunts and uncles.

There are stellar performances with Christopher Walken as the on stage narrator, who portrays the family patriarch, scholar, seer and friend. His is a mellow albeit tormented presence. But it’s Stephen Spinella as Freddy Malins who steals the show as the innocent and hapless guest who arrives always a bit too drunk. The character which has very little presence in James Joyce’s original story, appears here to be quite a character.. precisely one reason to attend family gatherings.

While THE DEAD captures us with its spiritual feeling, the story itself gets lost at times, failing to deliver continuity and clarity. And although it’s sentimental, it’s artfully achieved, a true innovation in musical theater.

That’s This Week on Broadway. I’m Isa Goldberg.