June 17, 2016

Bloomsday 2016

Steve Dedalus    posted 16 May 2016, 06:37 AM / edited 16 May 2016, 07:00 AM

LUCY LAWLESS & MICHAEL HURST TEAM UP FOR WORM-CRAWLING DUNGHEAP

One month to go and it’s a dazzling line-up for Auckland’s annual Bloomsday celebration on June 16. Appearing again this year are international stars Lucy Lawless and Michael Hurst.

Lucy Lawless will be playing Gerty MacDowell, lonely seaside siren of Sandymount Rocks.  Michael Hurst will be turning the broody, abstract Stephen Dedalus into a song & dance man.

They’ll be joined by Geraldine Brophy and Bruce Hopkins.

Geraldine Brophy will be reading the really unrestrained parts of Molly Bloom’s unrestrained soliloquy. Bruce Hopkins will appear once more as the fearful and fearsome transvestite dominatrix Bella Cohen, transmogrifying this year into Helen of Mt Albert, imperious Queen of the World, the face that lunched a thousand countries.

The show takes place one night only, June 16—a Thursday this year—and will be at the Thirsty Dog in K Rd’s red-light area, a fitting location for a subject once described as a heap of dung crawling with worms photographed by a cinema apparatus through a microscope, all the secret sewers of vice canalised in its flood of unimaginable thoughts, images and pornographic words.

Bloomsday is the celebration of a single day, June 16, 1904, the setting of James Joyce’s great comic novel, Ulysses. On that single all-including day Joyce re-imagines Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey unfolding out onto the streets and seaside and red-light district of Dublin in 1904.

Homer’s hero Odysseus becomes a Dublin Jew, Leopold Bloom.

Jews Brothers’ Bloomsday.

Thirsty Dog Tavern, Karangahape Rd, Auckland.

Thursday night, June 16, 7.30pm-10.30pm.

Steve Dedalus    posted 17 Jun 2016, 12:12 PM

Auckland’s annual Bloomsday celebration took place last night at the Thirsty Dog on Karangahape Road, a three-hour show with a four-piece band and a theatrical line-up that made it the hottest item in town.

Appearing again this year were Lucy Lawless and Michael Hurst from the epic sandals & skirts TV soap Xena, Warrior Princess.

They were joined by Geraldine Brophy and Bruce Hopkins.

Lucy Lawless played a tremendously touching Gerty MacDowell, lonely seaside siren of Sandymount Rocks.

Michael Hurst turned the broody, abstract Stephen Dedalus into a song & dance man (“Without my walking stick / I’d go insane / Can’t look my best / I’d feel undressed / Without my cane…”.

Geraldine Brophy was absolutely sensational reading the really unrestrained parts of Molly Bloom’s unrestrained soliloquy.

Bruce Hopkins appeared once more as the fearful and fearsome transvestite dominatrix Bella Cohen, transmogrifying this year into Helen of Mt Albert, imperious Queen of the World, the face that lunched a thousand countries.

As always the place was full as a bull, all come to witness Auckland’s most famous literary cabaret.

Japanese mezzo-soprano Yuko Takahashi sang from Mozart, aided by Balmoral’s Farrell Cleary, fabled Equity organiser of the early ’80s.

Dublin actor Brian Keegan read the loveliest and hilariest of excerpts from Ulysses.

Unite Union organiser Joe Carolan was the one-eyed Cyclops of the public bar (“Up the rebels! The IRA! The Real IRA! The Unreal IRA! The Surreal IRA…!”), while tenor and political commentator Chris Trotter sang of Irish socialist and revolutionary James Connolly. And sang The Foggy Dew.

Linn Lorkin and the Jews Brothers’ Band, augmented by Jean McAllister, provided a fabulous range of music: Motown, Mozart, ABBA, The Doors, klezmer, Edith Piaf, Marian hymns, Broadway musicals…

As always, Leopold Bloom, sad, cuckolded, melancholic, was played by well-known Brooklyn musical impresario Hershal Herscher. Asked by a local paper last week what he thought was the high point of the Auckland Bloomsday show, Hershal said, “It’s usually when I’m on my knees and a six-foot bearded transvestite dominatrix straight off K Rd forces me to lace up her very long leather boots. I’m still holding my accordion and she is schlepping me around the floor.” Such a wonderful show, such a celebration of life, totally unsupported by Creative NZ, one night only, hopelessly uneconomic. If J Joyce were alive, he’d be hot-footing it over to Auckland to see a show so full of life and lacking in reverence.