Joyce's Wake

Joyce’s Wake is a dramatization of the life of James Joyce’s family during their years in Paris, written by Michael Casey.

 

The emphasis is on the children, Lucia and Giorgio, who suffer unduly because of their father’s haphazard life-style and obsession with writing.

Lucia, a talented dancer, falls in love with Sam Beckett but their affair ends badly. She spends many years in asylums, often under heavy sedation. It is her ‘Wake’.

 

Giorgio, a fine singer, marries Helen Fleischman, an American heiress, ten years his senior; that relationship also fails and he slips into alcoholism.

 

The play casts light on some of the Joyce family mysteries, such as, why Nora never visited Lucia when she was in hospital, why Joyce never admitted that his daughter was mentally ill and why he failed to educate his children properly.

 

The fundamental question posed by the play is whether or not the creation of great art has to be at the expense of family life.