Ulysses of Scranton – Bedlam Theatre ★★★

Every generation gets the epic it deserves.Homer gave us Odysseus wandering home from the Trojan War. James Joyce took that ancient journey, shrank it to a single day in Dublin and transformed The Odyssey into Ulysses, proving that buying kidneys, attending funerals and wandering city streets could be every bit as heroic as battling cyclopes. Ulysses of Scranton arrives at a useful moment, with Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey once again reminding audiences that these old stories never really disappear. Instead, they keep finding new vessels. Joyce found his in Dublin. Conor Kelly O’Brien finds his in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The cleverness lies in refusing to adapt the novel directly. Instead, the production follows a theatre company attempting to stage Joyce’s famously “unadaptable” masterpiece. As rehearsals progress, life and literature begin to bleed into one another. The actors wrestle not only with Joyce’s labyrinthine prose but with their own personal baggage; a…