‘Bloomsday’: A time-bending love story

Editor’s Note: For another view, please see Carol Davis‘s review of this play.

By Cantor Sheldon Foster Merel

SOLANA BEACH, California –North Coast Rep’s s Bloomsday is a sweet and charming story of love lost, re-imagined, and possibly regained. Bloomsday is a clever switch of past and present with four excellent actors taking us along their past, or is it the present?

Young Caithleen, a tour guide in Dublin, is busy arranging tours of places in Dublin mentioned in James Joyce’s 1922 novel, Ulysses. Robert, an older American tourist appears with Caithleen, and mysteriously knows her name, and tells her a young man will soon appear in her life and they will fall in love. She is obviously confused, and has no idea who this man is, what he is talking about, nor does the audience.

Robbie, a young American enters and tells Cait, an older Irish woman, that he is anxious to find a girl he saw at Saint Stephen’s s Green. Cait (Jacquelyn Ritz) sympathizes with him, and like Robert (Martin Kildare) knows all about Robbie, and what will happen next.

Ah ha, now, we are beginning to understand that young Robbie and Caithleen are the counterparts of the older couple when they had met in Dublin for one day 35 years ago. . Robert returned to America leaving Cait in Dublin, but they never forgot the tender love they felt for each other.

Stephen Dietz, the playwright of Bloomsday, borrowed much of the story’s theme from James Joyce’s 1922 novel Ulysses. Fortunately, one need not be familiar with Joyce’s book to appreciate the play on its own, so don’t lose faith.

The magic of the script by Stephen Dietz, and direction of Andrew Barnacle makes of time and age smooth. Are Robbie (Hunter Slain) and Caithleen (Rachel Wick) in the present, and Robert and Cait in the past or reverse?

The audience soon realizes that Robert and Cait are reliving their earlier one-day chance meeting of 35 years past. They are seated together in the final scene and we learn Robert is a widower and Cait never married.

Could there be a chance they will get together after all in the present and celebrate in a local Pub?

Catch the show and see what you think.

Special kudos to the design team that includes Marty Burnett (Resident Scenic Designer), Matthew Novotny (Lighting), Aaron Rumley (Sound & Projections), Philip Korth (Props) and Peter Herman (Wigs). Aaron Rumley* is the Stage Manager.

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Sheldon Foster Merel is cantor emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel.  He may be contacted via sheldon.merel@sdjewishworld.com