Molly Bloom: an evening in an idyllic garden with an earthy woman times five
8 Jun 2018

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

In the tranquil Majlis Art Garden, beautifully bedecked with floral arrangements, four women discuss their seething sexuality, frustrations and quest for pleasure despite the uselessness of men in general. They move from topic to topic with quicksilver speed, in unison, in overlapping contradictions, much laughter, and occasional gorgeous four-part harmony vocals. And well they should: the conversation is taking place in the mind of Molly Bloom, she of the gorgeous soliloquy that makes up the final section of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Molly Bloom the theatrical piece is less a dissection of Ulysses and more an exploration of a woman's psyche. Particularly her sexual psyche. Scholarly analysis or debates about fidelity to, and/or interpretation of, the sacred text, will have to be left to others, I preferred to surrender to the sumptuousness of the prose and the cascade of moods and ideas. Molly Brown takes place firmly in the past and Ulysses's frank depiction of female sexuality was shocking in its time. Perhaps still shocking. 

But anyone who has heard women converse about their lives and loves, will recognize many of the themes and incidents. The slang and amount of knowledge has changed, but there are fundamental consistencies across the decades, now almost a century. Director/adaptor Jocelyn Adema (Peter Pan, Pippi The Strongest Girl in the World) and the talented cast seem less concerned with linking past to present, with the successes and failures of feminism and a woman's rights to pleasure and equality, than they are with exploring Bloom's particular struggle.

As the four, as one, describe and dissect her conquests, seductions, failures and confusions, a portrait emerges of a complicated, earthy woman grappling with a world and society that favours men over her. "Why are we made with a big hole in the middle?" she asks. Then answers, "Because that is all they want. They're all mad to get up in there where they came from." They/she are just as descriptive of male anatomy, with appreciation and with disdain. That perhaps is the most telling critique in Molly Bloom, that in 2018 it is still surprising to realize or be reminded that women do talk and think frankly.

The cast can only be considered as an ensemble as they work with synchronization that is tightly but naturalistically choreographed. The stage floor is covered with quilts and when they aren't snuggled on a large comfortable couch, they crawl, sprawl, and strut on the artwork of women's work. The cast has all worked together before - this Molly Brown is the culmination of five years work and two workshop productions - and it shows with the easy intimacy that they have with each other. They could really be four voices conversing in a single mind. Or a one woman show performed by five.

Adema, Annie Tuma (Turtleneck), Lena Maripuu and Reanne Spitzer all worked together on Pippi the Strongest Girl in the World, with Adema, Maripuu and Spitzer also collaborating on Peter Pan. Sarah Bridget Doyle was in previous incarnations of Molly Bloom and has worked before with Fourth Gorgon Theatre, the producers of Molly Bloom, where Tuma, Adema and Spitzer are co-artistic directors. That interconnectedness - so contradictory to Bloom's statements that "We [women] are a dreadful bunch of bitches." "I'm not like that." - gleams on the stage with a seamless grace, quite contrary to Bloom's interactions and opinions with other women, particularly wives of her conquests.

Because Ulysses is a highly poetic (and often impenetrable) text, Molly Bloom has moments where the words disconnect from coherence or contain a phrase or word that is no longer part of the common parlance. Just how hard the creatives have had to work to make Bloom a coherent heroine is illustrated by the program notes (which it is highly recommended that one read, as anyone who has wrestled their way through Ulysses's daunting delights will attest, a bit of context is a great help). On the back is printed an excerpt from Bloom's soliloquy and it is a harsh reminder of how beautiful but difficult Joyce is to read. Yet when the four, as one, come to that portion of text, it all becomes crystal clear and is solidly rendered. The idyllic setting melts away and Bloom steps to the forefront in corporeal flesh.