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written and directed by Craig Walker

Theatre Kingston, Grand Theatre, Kingston

May 21–June 7, 2026

“Let us leave theories there and return to here’s here”

Theatre Kingston has revived its greatest success, Finnegans Wake: A Dream Play by Craig Walker on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. I reviewed the original production when it toured to Toronto in 2001. It is clear, seeing the play now after all these years, that it has lost none of its brilliance. The passing of time has only revealed the play to be the best ever Canadian adaption of a novel. The choice of novel itself is audacious — Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce, commonly regarded as the most difficult novel ever written. Walker accomplishes an amazing feat by both making the themes and structure of the novel understandable while revealing that the novel’s unceasing polyvalent word play as extraordinarily entertaining. Walker’s adaption is a major accomplishment and the current cast and creative team make the show absolutely dazzling.

Set designer Andrea Robertson has replicated the show’s original alley staging with the opaque glass door and windows to the Salmon House pub at one end and a detailed bar at the other. Above the bar is an inclined bed where our hero-dreamer, H.C.E. (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) is discovered asleep with his wife A.L.P. (Anna Livia Pluribelle). Throughout the action their initials take on new meanings. H.C.E. is also “Here Comes Everybody” and “Has Children Everywhere” inter alia  and A.L.P. “All Ladies Present” and “Art, Literature, Politics” inter alia.

Walker has conceived of the fantastic action as occurrences in H.C.E.’s dreams in which he sees himself and his family repeating archetypal situations from history and myth. The first episode concerns H.C.E. seeing himself as Tim Finnegan, the hero of the Irish-American folk ballad entitled “Finnegan’s Wake” (1864). In this ballad Finnegan, a drunken hod-carrier, falls off a ladder, breaks his skull and is presumed dead. His friends hold a wake for him, but when his corpse is splashed with whisky, he comes to life again. This ballad gives the novel its title (without the apostrophe) and establishes H.C.E. as an Everyman, his fall as the Fall of Man and his waking up at his wake as man’s rebirth. The story of Tim Finnegan immediately slides into the myth of the Irish giant Finn McCool whose sleeping body is said to form the island of Ireland.

H.C.E.’s recurring nightmare involves the claim that he had illicit relations with two women in Dublin’s Phoenix Park along with A.L.P.’s attempts to rescue him from shame by writing a letter in his defense. As I noted in 2001, H.C.E. and his wife and their battling twin sons, Shaun and Shem, and their daughter Izzy find their lives recapitulating every Western myth involving fathers, wives, sons, daughters and lovers, from the legend of the giant Finn McCool to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to figures of Joyce’s own Ireland.

In my 2001 review I praised Walker for avoiding the flaws of so many adaptions of novels that fail to capture the language of the original or the development of its characters. This time what stood out as the key to the brilliance of the adaption is Walker’s emphasis on the theatricality of the play as a correlative to the world of constant transformation present in Joyce’s “plot” and in his language.

Theatre, like Joyce’s text, as Walker sees so clearly, is based on transformation. An empty space can become any place a character says it is. A character can morph into another character simply though changes in voice or appearance. One actor plays H.C.E. and, depending on circumstances, can show us H.C.E. as Tim Finnegan, Finn McCool and King Marke in Tristan und Isolde. The extensive doubling Walker assigns the other six actors who play denizens of the pub reflects the novel’s portrayal of characters who continually change their identities. What Walker gives us, then, is a magical playing area bracketed by two symbols of Irishness (the door to the pub at one end and the pub’s bar at the other) which, like Joyce’s text itself, become the locus for the constant mutability of words, time, place and character.

Just as Joyce uses every literary technique to tell his circular tale, Walker uses every theatrical device to perform that tale. His seven-member ensemble not only acts, but sings, dances, plays instruments and some even manipulate puppets. Walker uses fantastic puppets designed and created by Clelia Scala for certain scenes. A talking mossy rock represents Finn McCool as all Ireland. Delicate marionettes are used for Joyce’s take on Aesop’s fable in “The Ondt and the Gracehoper”.

To illustrate H.C.E.’s alleged dealing with two loose women, Walker stages the scene as a shadow play on the pub’s translucent windows and entrance door. Aided by Tim Fort’s endlessly inventive lighting, shadows in other scenes grow, dimmish or float against Brian Frommer’s eye-catching projections. Fort achieves a strobe effect simply by using the old-fashioned technique of placing a slotted wheel in front of a strong lamp.

Walker has found an outstanding ensemble whose unity and clarity of purpose draw us deeply into the action. All seven have mastered Joyce’s dream language where virtually every other word is a pun or has been mutated to create multiple meanings. It is the ensemble’s confidence in speaking this often tongue-twistery text that makes us listen. Even if we cannot understand every allusion Joyce has built into every phrase, the ensemble’s acting is so persuasive that we quickly give ourselves over to the tale they tell.

Two actors from the 2001 production, Keven Head and Rosemary Doyle, appear in this revival. Head is most notable as a singer and musician who brings to life the numerous rousing songs both traditional and purpose-written. Doyle is a delightful presence throughout, clearly distinguishing through subtle changes of voice and gesture her many comic characters from one of the wontons of Phoenix Park to a prim schoolteacher to a gossipy washerwoman.

As H.C.E., Sean Roberts brings out the confusion we’ve all experienced — frightening in a dream, comic on reflection — of being thrust into awkward situations with no idea how we got there or how to get out. One of his funniest moments is living the teacher’s nightmare of finding himself before a class of students with no clue what to tell them. Melissa Morris gives a sensitive performance as A.L.P. Initially, as general narrator Morris gently leads us into the world of the play and as the newly awakened A.L.P., she beautifully leads us out.

Aiden Robert Bruce and Jake Henderson generate palpable tension as the rival twins Shaun and Shem. Bruce has a booming voice that easily lends itself to the play’s many authority figures. Bruce is also a fine singer with a particular gift for ballads. We may wonder why Jake Henderson is made up to look like Joyce himself until we realize that of the twins Shem is characterized as the writer while Shaun is only the postman. Henderson makes the most of the identification in playing Shem as the acerbic critic of others, especially Shaun, in all matters, social, religious, political and aesthetic. Siobhán McMahon plays their twins’ sister Izzy, among many roles. Her background in dance and movement adds a vital element to the fusion of all the arts that Walker’s production has envisioned.

Seeing Finnegans Wake: A Dream Play I was lost in admiration, yet again, both for the insight and brilliance of Walker’s adaptation and for the precision and clarity of his direction. The play and the production deserve to be better known and more widely seen. One can only wish that it could tour again. The show is proof that one must look beyond Canada’s largest cities to comprehend fully the true breadth and depth of the country’s creativity and talent.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Jake Henderson, Siobhán McMahon, Melissa Morris, Keven Head and Rosemary Doyle as pub denizens; Sean Roberts as H.C.E. with Siobhán McMahon and Rosemary Doyle as two bawds; Siobhán McMahon as the Ondt and other insects with Jake Henderson as the Gracehoper; Melissa Morris as A.L.P. © 2026 Tim Fort.

For tickets visit: www.kingstongrand.ca.