Review: A Modern Classic Goes on Trial in The United States vs Ulysses

In 1933 Judge John M. Woolsey made a ruling in a case that would expand the repertoire of words and ideas that writers could (legally) explore in their works. In United States v. One Book Entitled Ulysses by James Joyce, Joyce’s 1922 novel was put on trial for obscenity, a charge that had previously made it ineligible for importation into the US. At issue in particular was the book’s final episode detailing the inner thoughts, many of them sexually explicit, of the character Molly Bloom, and the perceived deleterious effects that certain words, like f***, might have on young minds.

Colin Murphy has taken an inventive and hilarious approach to this case in his courtroom drama The United States vs Ulysses, now making its North American premiere at the Irish Arts Center under the lively direction of Conall Morrison. Staged as a radio news show, Murphy’s play is as insightful as it is funny—and it’s chillingly resonant in our current climate of paternalistic philistinism, which, among other things, seeks to yank books from shelves in a moral and cultural panic over corrupting the nation’s youth.

The play takes place in a 1933 radio studio (art deco set design by Liam Doona), where six harried actors are trying to pull together a show dramatizing the court case (Catherine Fay’s dresses and three-piece suits help establish the period). Morrison ramps up the comic energy from the outset as Bennett Cerf (Ross Gaynor), a co-founder of Random House, pleads with lawyer Morris Ernst (Mark Lambert) to help him get Ulysses into the US so that he can bulk up his new publishing house’s catalogue. To do that, Ernst must coax an indifferent customs official to seize the book so that Ernst can take it to trial.

At first, Ernst has a tough time convincing Judge Woolsey (Morgan C. Jones) that the so-called obscenity of Ulysses is not pornographic in nature but rather serves an artistic purpose. The presence in the courtroom of Ernst’s wife, Margaret (Ali White), whose presumed delicate feminine sensibilities preclude discussion of the book’s most despicable passages, doesn’t help matters. Yet, despite an impassioned speech from prosecutor Sam Coleman (Gaynor) on the book’s potential to pervert the most vulnerable readers, Ernst convinces Judge Woolsey that Joyce was artistically representing the stream-of-consciousness thoughts of his characters in a way that all of us experience every day, bodily functions and all.

Putting the action within the context of a hastily put-together radio play is an inspired idea. Not only does the format mirror the quick turnaround of the actual hearing (like the action of Joyce’s novel, it took place in one day), it also allows for unique comic touches such as Foley effects (sound designer Simon Kenny gives the judge’s gavel an emphatic bang) and voice gags (Clare Barrett plays an ever-present Molly Bloom ecstatically sighing her iconic “Yes” in the background). There’s also a dream sequence depicting a bawdy scene from the “Hades” episode of Ulysses in which the character Leopold Bloom (Jonathan White) is put on trial for sexual improprieties (John Comiskey’s lighting creates a ghoulish dreamscape). The parallels to the actual court case are spot on.

One need not have read Ulysses to understand the goings-on in Murphy’s play; even the most literary-minded readers find the novel “difficult,” with many closing it prematurely and placing it quietly on a bookshelf. Even so, the novel and the case surrounding it have impacted us all immeasurably whether we know it or not. It’s tempting to look back at Judge Woolsey’s decision as a quaint reminder of the way things used to be before Fifty Shades of Grey and Monty Python, but our beloved freedoms of speech and expression have never been completely free from attack, and now the bonfires have begun to blaze again. The United States vs Ulysses reminds us that we must cherish—and protect—our beliefs in liberty of thought, the uncensored exchange of ideas, and the unasterisked right to say, write, and read the word fuck.