The United States vs Ulysses

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When the scope of intellectual discourse becomes uncomfortable to those with religious or political power, those entities use the tools at their disposal to limit or stop that discourse. This exertion of control is called censorship, and it is most often exercised against published works, especially books.

The United States vs Ulysses by Colin Murphy is a multi-layered play about a seminal case concerning censorship in publishing. The story is set in 1933 in the studios of the CBS radio show “The March of Time.” The radio show reenacted recent news stories, including one about the trial of James Joyce’s then controversial novel Ulysses, but the tapes of it no longer exist. Murphy imagined what that show may have been like, and it forms the framework of the play.

An ensemble of six superbly talented actors embody a panoply of characters under the skillful direction of Conall Morrison. Four of the cast, Ross Gaynor, Morgan C. Jones, Mark Lambert, and Jonathan White, were in the original production staged at Pavilion Theatre, in the Dún Laoghaire section of Dublin, in November 2023. The remaining two members are Claire Barrett and Ali White.

The show opens with the actors casually entering the radio studio, sitting in a row of chairs behind a nearby table, and chatting. Their chit-chat sets the stage for the arrival of the Director, who brings the just-completed scripts for the show airing in a few minutes—a real challenge for the assembled actors. Jonathan White beautifully enables the Director, who also plays Leopold Bloom, and The Voice of Time, the narrator who introduces the scene changes.

The show is essentially a play within a play with a dream sequence. The main body is the radio dramatization of the trial, which includes the events leading up to the trial, the trial itself, and the outcome. The courtroom scenes wrap around the dream sequence, which stages one of the episodes from Joyce’s novel. It is a step outside of the radio play providing context for what is to follow in the remaining courtroom scene. This scene presents powerful exchanges between the defense lawyer Morris Ernst (Mark Lambert), the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Coleman (Ross Gaynor), and Judge John Munro Woolsey (Morgan C. Jones).

The exchanges between Ernst, Coleman, and Woolsey are particularly interesting, given Coleman’s views on the book. He thinks the work is a “literary masterpiece” but also considers it obscene within the context of the Tariff Act of 1930. The actual transcripts inform the interactions among the three characters but are not verbatim to the trial.

When the radio drama goes on the air, the first exchange is a brief excerpt between Ernst, Coleman, and Woolsey from the 1933 trial. The interaction sets in motion a flashback transition to the events leading up to the trial. This sequence presents the backstory of Bennett Cerf’s involvement with Ulysses. Cerf is one of the owners of Random House Publishing, and he wants to gain the U.S. publishing rights for the book. In Paris, he strikes a deal with Joyce and Joyce’s wife based on the book getting approval for sale in the United States. Cerf is played by Gaynor, who also plays US Attorney Coleman. He is nearly perfect in his switch between these two characters with a small issue with the accents.

The next step for Cerf is to find a lawyer to handle the case. The only choice is Morris Ernst, chief counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union and the winner of obscenity cases lodged against other books. Ernst creates a plan to get a copy of the book seized by U.S. Customs for a Federal court trial. How he achieves the goal is an interesting piece of history that the play describes broadly without getting bogged down in the fine details. The three main characters give solid performances with additional elements added by the rest of the ensemble.

At this point in the trial, things have gotten heated, and as the case seems to be going off-track for Ernst, Woolsey calls for a recess. It marks the beginning of a five-minute intermission in the radio show. As the actors leave the studio, one stays behind. As he begins to look through a copy of Ulysses, he dozes off. The stage transforms into a dream sequence presenting Episode Fifteen, “Circe” from the book, in the Nighttown area of 1904 Dublin.

It is a scene that provides the audience with a taste of the book and some of the issues in the trial. Murphy cleverly uses this method to expose the audience to a book that the majority of the audience has never read or has only partly read.

The presentation mirrors the structure of Episode Fifteen in which most of the action appears as drunken, subconscious, anxiety-ridden hallucinations. The ensemble drops their American accents and intones the dialects appropriate to the characters in the book, completing the transformation from the reality of the studio to the plain of dreams. The lighting effects by John Comiskey solidly define the scene as being one of a dream or hallucination, as does the sound design by Simon Kenny. Catherine Fay’s costume design is spot-on for this sequence and the entire production.

When the trial resumes, Murphy gets into the heart of the arguments presented by the two lawyers. It is a recitation of the core ideas of each side in the case. It provides ideas germane to events currently happening in many locales in the U.S. where censorship is banning books from libraries and attacking the written word because it does not adhere to a particular socio-political or religious ideology.

Murphy weaves together the words of Ernst, Coleman, and Woolsey with dialogue from the book, giving definition to the story being told by Joyce and raising the issues at stake to a rarified and precise position in understanding what constitutes freedom of expression. The weaving of the dialogue is more powerfully played out when Woolsey reads his affirmative decision as the character Molly Bloom speaks her lines from the episode at the heart of the case. The scene shifts briefly from the courtroom to Nighttown as a coda of triumph for the characters of Ulysses. The return to the courtroom brings closure between Ernst and Coleman, and with that, the On Air light flickers off, and the radio drama ends.

The radio actors say their goodnights with some suggesting they all go out for drinks since prohibition officially ended the day before. The Director has one more thing to do before he leaves: interview a newly arrived young actor named Orson Welles.

There are a few minor issues with the production. While the set has a decidedly art deco feel, it does not accurately depict the CBS broadcast studio of 1933. It appears the reason for Liam Doona’s design is to allow for a transition to the dream sequence. However, it seems the transition could be accomplished while remaining faithful to the original layout.

Another issue is the location of the broadcast microphone. In this show, it is hanging from the ceiling, causing the actors to look up and shout their lines as they perform. This is not representative of how it was done, and it leads to the ensemble’s actions being almost farce-like, with running and jumping. The foley table (sound effects) is an integral part of the script but is not well represented on the stage, although Kenny’s sound design is solid.

Regardless of the minor issues, if you enjoy a good story, told well, this is a show worth experiencing.

The United States vs Ulysses (through June 1, 2025)

Once Off Productions with support from The Brandt Jackson Foundation

JL Greene Theater at the Irish Arts Center, 726 11th Avenue, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.tickets.irishartscenter.org/overview/2536

Running time: 85 minutes without an intermission