Love Joyce, Hate Jazz?

• Author: Rimensnyder, Sara
• Position: "Molly Bloom: A Musical Dream" - Brief Article

Authorities around the world have repeatedly banned James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses, usually because of the literally climactic soliloquy of the character Molly Bloom, who unabashedly cries out, "yes I said yes I will Yes" after detailing hererotic exploits. Now Italian performer Anna Zapparoli has adapted that scene to the stage, performing it for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. Sitting atop a grand piano and accompanied by a jazz band, Zapparoli sings lyrics taken from Molly's monologue.

Not everyone's excited about Molly Bloom: A Musical Dream, which the festival's program listed as "adults only." Stephen Joyce, the Irish author's grandson and zealous guardian of his estate, struggled but failed to halt the production.

Joyce says it wasn't the propriety of ditties like "Song of the Big Hole" that rubbed him the wrong way. Nope, he quibbled with the idea of adapting the novel as a stage musical. His grandfather, he said, intended the passage to be the conclusion to a novel, and so it should remain. "The listener/viewer should not have their attention distracted by music...