Bloomsday in Melbourne

The centrepiece of the annual Bloomsday festival is a play, 'Love's Bitter Mystery: The Year that Made James Joyce'. Bloomsday is back with a new play to celebrate the centenary of the publication of James Joyce's 'Ulysses'. Written by Steve Carey and directed by Jennifer Sarah Dean and Associate Editor Carly Ellis, it is an immersive site-specific play written for the spectacular boom era mansion, Villa Alba, in Kew. The mansion provides a setting that beautifully matches the mood of the piece: cold and damp, but also grand and dramatic, like Joyce himself. In fact, Villa Alba was built in the very year Joyce was born, 1882. The play tells the story of the year, 1903-4. in which James Joyce returned to Ireland for the death of his mother and in which he met Nora Barnacle and draws on Joyce's writing from several periods in his career. It's intense and moving.