Theater

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay...”^[1] Adherents of James Joyce’s 1939 tome Finnegans Wake espouse the idea that its language comes to life only when read aloud. Singlehandedly validating that claim, formidable Irish actress Olwen Fouéré, assuming the role of the river Liffey, offers this incandescent interpretation of the final section of Joyce’s “book of the night.” A force of nature possessed of every crackling phrase, Fouéré (who also adapted and directs the piece) turns Joyce’s prose into an undulating soundscape, inhabiting the voice of Anna Livia Plurabelle, the river’s personification, as she swells and surges her way through the Wake’s end and out to sea.