Dead City

New York-based playwright Sheila Callaghan’s loose adaptation, or ‘riff,’ on Joyce’s Ulysses,takes place on June 16, 2004, 100 years to the day after Joyce’s jaunt through Dublin.
In this 90 minute comic drama, Samantha has husband problems, empty-nest syndrome (her Barbie-doll daughter is off at Vassar) and a hidden torment. This last is a lost son who would be 22 but died shortly after birth. Jewel is also stalked by regret, and is pursing her own obsession, Patti Smith, whose song, Dead City, inspired the play’s title.