James Joyce Quarterly

Samuel Beckett might have been pleased. But Joyce … well, not so much. Like Godot in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Gabriel Conroy is a no-show in Brian Watkins's one-act play Epiphany, a riff on Joyce's short story "The Dead," which had its American premiere at Lincoln Center in New York this past summer. The world premiere was presented by the Druid Theatre Company of Galway, Ireland, back in 2019. As long as Gabriel was not appearing, however, the producers might have spared American audiences this play, as well as the trip across the Atlantic.

While Gabriel's non-appearance is one of several clever and intriguing ideas in the play, it is not the only thing missing from this re-visioning of "The Dead." There is no mention of Joyce's story in the publicity or the playbill for Epiphany. And, while the acting is generally adequate, aside from the AWOL Gabriel and a tepid Freddy Malins, none of the characters in this play carry the names, recite the lines, nor retain other attributes of the figures we are all so familiar with in "The Dead." Aunt Kate, for instance, is renamed just "Morkan," and she is the central figure here. None of this matters since audiences are blissfully unaware of Epiphany's connections with "The Dead" anyway; Joyce would probably have been happy with that. The dialogue that has been substituted in this play for his elegiac language can only, ironically, be described in one word: deadly. Most of the conversation in Epiphany consists of solipsistic philosophizing, sophomoric psychologizing, and handwringing blather, especially by Morkan.

That all said, it is relevant to recall that "The Dead" has served as inspiration for multiple reputable versions, ranging from a movie to a musical, and even an opera and more. Each of these has had its strong points and points that were less strong. So a brief account of some of the more interesting aspects of Epiphany that are related to "The Dead"—not the story line itself, really, nor the dialogue—might best serve readers of this review.

The almost-in-the-round Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater affords the entire audience an opportunity easily to view all the actors as they make their way in and out and around the stage. Many of the characters' lines are spoken simultaneously, however, so, while they can always be seen, they cannot always be heard over one another. The set [End Page 573] is dramatic; a tri-level staircase dominates. Watkins has spoken about the staircase's importance to his play, alluding to heaven and hell as the characters ascend and descend. Snow is falling continuously throughout the play, cast against a black backdrop seen through two large windows at the rear. The snow looked real, so I found myself periodically wondering how much of it was piling up backstage during the course of the show; but it could have been a very good screen.

Like Joyce's story, Epiphany has three theatrical movements, although, unlike "The Dead," they all occur during the dinner party; there is no travel to the Gresham Hotel and no final scene there. The opening third of the play has eight guests arriving sequentially, in singles and pairs, with each speculating about the purpose of the gathering and the meaning of "epiphany" as they enter. Morkan has each of the guests surrender his or her cell phone to a lockbox as soon as they arrive; the phones ring on and off, simultaneously, during the show, tempting the guests to retrieve them. Two of the guests are gay black men. One weepy woman is a sort of combined Lily and Mary Jane, welcoming guests and assisting with the service of food and drink. Another particularly annoying and talkative guest is a female journalist, perhaps a stand-in for Molly Ivors; she proceeds to get drunk before dinner is served. Several of the other guests drink too much as well, thereby...