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Dubliners Dilemma Analysis

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The Dubliners Dilemma is a one-man-show directed and performed by Declan Gorman. The story was about an author - James Joyce was having a hard time to publish his book “Dubliners”. But later on there was Mr. Grant Richards – an early potential publisher but quite nervous whether it would be a threat to him and his firm or not since this book contents some sensitive information. However, at the end he decided to give it a try after numerous rejections before and the book was finally published in 1914.
Adaptations of Joyce’s works and stage biographies of the writer abound, making it hard for a writer to determine his effort and to create an appeal that will extend beyond tourist audiences or Joyce aficionados. Gorman, a compelling performer, frames his Joyce a montage on the fraught publishing battle that preceded the appearance of Dubliners in 1914. Most of the drama, however, consists of nearly verbatim enactments of Joyce’s texts of 'An Encounter', 'Counterparts', 'A Mother' and 'Two Gallants'. Gorman enacts roles from that of the insufferable snob, Mrs. Kearney, the eponymous mum of the latter story, to the little boys in the others. Set in the offices of Grant Richards, Joyce’s cautious but eventual publisher, Gorman as Richards, begins his correspondence with the author in Eoghan Darcy and Edward Stevenson’s clever, utilitarian set comprised of stacks of folded cardboard boxes the size of reams of paper which function as office furniture.

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