"What do you do when you're a unique and very creative person in your own right but your father just happens to be one of the great writers not just of the century but probably ever?" So reads this play's program cover, promising a "pee-in-your-pants… farce" about the mental dissipation of James Joyce's creative, ultimately mad daughter, Lucia. The play is not at all what it says it is. It's certainly not a farce, although there are a few mildly funny lines scattered here and there. It is rather a poignant and beautifully written tragedy. And the real focus of this drama—as written—is not so much that Lucia Joyce was a talented woman under the crushing shadow of her father, a neglected genius. The point is that she is a neglected human being—lonely, lost, desperate for love and encouragement she never receives.
Don Nigro has written a fine, impressive play, doubly so when one considers his task was to put words in the mouths of two of the greatest literary talents of the past century: Joyce and his protégé Samuel Beckett. When the young Beckett comes to meet Joyce (a somewhat childlike yet profound Walter Beery), the lonely, love-starved Lucia falls violently in love with him. She tries everything to gain his love: sweetness, seduction, malicious manipulation, desperation. Yet the problem here is not only that desperation tends to repel rather than attract the object of one's affection; it is that Beckett does not believe in love to begin with. To him it is an "imaginary state," the "ultimate stupidity." He describes the concept of "sharing" as "passing around vomit in a gravy dish."
As Lucia, Mary Beth O'Donovan gives a tour-de-force performance, crafting the intricate world of Lucia's growing madness with unexpected choices. J.J. Gleason gives us a suitably depressed, impenetrable Samuel Beckett and has a mien quite like the man himself. His stone-faced gaze frustrates us in the first act though later proves to be a justifiable choice. He is a brick wall for Lucia to rail against and plead for. Mary Eileen O'Donnell is a meek, frustrated wife and mother as Nora Joyce. Kudos must also be given to the immoderately talented Robert Patrick Brink, who makes his two smaller roles—as family friend McGreevy and the famed Carl Jung—as memorable as the play itself.
The writing and the performances alike grow better, darker, more complex as the play goes on. Nigro attempts to infuse Act One with plenty of lighthearted giggles. The problem is that the jokes are not very good, which is perhaps why the performers don't seem to perform them with much gusto (more gusto might work wonders, though). The main comic technique employed is to have characters constantly taking the words of others too literally. The device grows tiresome quickly.
Kevin O'Donovan's direction likewise improves with Act Two. Whereas in Act One, blocking and body language in the familial encounters seemed a touch awkward, by Act Two they all seemed to have settled into a comfortable fluidity. Despite minor flaws, Lucia Mad is a provocative, quite moving account of a young woman's desperation, set within an inherently interesting literary world.
"Lucia Mad," presented by Syzygistic Ink at the 24th Street Theatre, 1117 W. 24th St., L.A. Wed.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Mar. 14-24. $10. (323) 769-7040.