A highly effective synthesis: James Joyce’s The Dead in a dramatised reading from Niamh Cusack with music from The Fourth Choir that underscored the emotional drama

The Dead – Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe – Wilton’s Music Hall (Photo: Kathleen Holman)

The Dead: James Joyce, Sarah MacDonald, Rhona Clarke, Robert Parsons, Bellini, Aine Mallon, Joanna Marsh, Samuel Barber, Healey Willan, Bo Holten; Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe, Seamus Rea; Wilton’s Music Hall
Reviewed 14 January 2025

The slightly unlikely combination of Joyce’s masterly long short-story and music from Robert Parsons to Healey Willan and Samuel Barber to Joanna Marsh and Bo Holten proved a surprisingly effective synthesis, creating an engaging theatrical experience, not quite dramatic reading and not quite musical treatment.

James Joyce’s The Dead, the final short story in his 1914 collection Dubliners might seem a somewhat unlikely inspiration for musical treatment, but it has inspired more than one dramatic adaptation including a Broadway musical. Music does, in fact, play an important part in the story. The first half depicts a Dublin party which seems an amusing examination of Irish identity, but a folksong The Lass of Aughrim raises such powerful memories and emotions in the hero, Gabriel Conroy’s wife, Gretta, that the second half of the story where Gabriel and Gretta Conroy retire to a hotel, goes in an entirely surprising direction. The story ends with Gabriel watching the snow and considering the role of the dead in people’s lives – “His soul swooned slowly, as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead”.

On Tuesday 14 January 2025, The Fourth Choir, musical director Jamie Powe, presented a dramatised reading of James Joyce’s The Dead at Wilton’s Music Hall, with actor Niamh Cusack. The work was adapted and directed by Séamus Rea, and developed in collaboration with Jamie Powe, with lighting by Guy Hoare.

The Dead – Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe – Wilton’s Music Hall (Photo: Kathleen Holman)

The result was surprisingly engaging and thought-provoking, a dramatised reading of The Dead interspersed with music that sometimes referenced the story and sometimes simply heightened the atmosphere. 

Niamh Cusack, dressed in a frock that was entirely suggestive of the Twelfth Night party on Usher’s Island in 1904, gave us a wonderfully dramatic performance, at times reading the narrative out to the listening choir, stood and sat around her, and at times embodying the characters themselves. The assembled partygoers were suggested by the members of The Fourth Choir, but Rea’s direction kept things loose and the focus was very firmly on Cusack. She gave a masterly performance, and frankly, simply hearing her reading The Dead and bringing these characters to life was worth the entrance money.

There are musical references in the story (Joyce was himself highly musically literate), ranging from the song sung by one of Gabriel Conroy’s aunts, to recollections of great opera performances to the singing of The Lass of Aughrim. But the selection of music performed by The Fourth Choir was wider than this, we had music by Sarah MacDonald, Rhona Clarke, Robert Parsons, Bellini, Aine Mallon, Joanna Marsh, Samuel Barber, Healey Willan, Bo Holten and James Joyce himself, plus folk songs arranged by Jamie Powe.

Most of the music was there to conjure atmosphere and heighten emotions. So that the opening number, Like Snow in Winter (Sarah MacDonald’s setting of R.S. Thomas), with its enjoyable and highly effective tonal modernisms, had little musical or textual link to the story but created the right emotional atmosphere. The perky carol on a Medieval text by Rhona Clarke was a slightly unlikely evocation of the quadrilles mentioned in the story, but the musical adaptation avoided this sort of literalism. Perhaps wisely, because the one moment when music and story combined was the evocation of the Italian opera, when we had film footage of Maria Callas and then an uneasy mix of recorded sound and live choir in an excerpt from Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma.

Robert Parson’s Ave Maria and Aine Mallon’s Dum Transisset Sabbatum were there to give the religious setting required. The early part of the story is very involved in both religion (there is one sole Protestant at the party, and much talk of the Pope), and Irish nationalism, as at one point a partygoer accuses Gabriel Conroy of being a West Briton. The party ended with two folksong arrangements by Jamie Powe, The Lass of Aughrim (with a fine solo from Gareth Moss) and The Parting Glass.

The Dead – Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe – Wilton’s Music Hall (Photo: Kathleen Holman)

For the second half, things were rather more conceptual as we were now in the hotel room with Gabriel and Gretta Conroy, the story concentrating on Gabriel’s thoughts. Joanna Marsh’s In Winter’s House (setting a text by Jane Draycott) made some highly effective scene setting, whilst Samuel Barber’s James Stephens setting, The Coolin, brought a highly effective Irish feel to the music. The remaining pieces were there to highlight the mood, as Gretta narrates her teenage love affair with the young man who used to sing The Lass of Aughrim, who died tragically young, and then Gabriel’s thoughts roam free. James Joyce’s own Bid Adieu was given in a highly effective arrangement by Edmund Pendleton and Jamie Powe, but the heavy lifting was done by Healey Willan’s Longfellow setting, The Dead and finally Bo Holten’s First Snow which was at first used as underscore to Niamh Cusack’s reading of the final lines of the story, shading the presentation into true melodrama for the first time.

Mixing music and spoken word is tricky, because our minds are attuned to registering the text above the musical material, but here the balance felt right. I have to confess that I was somewhat uncertain of the concept at first, and an annoying part of my brain wanted the music to adhere to a sort of literalism that probably would not have worked as well. But the performers created a highly effective synthesis, Niamh Cusack was a wonderfully engaging yet also a highly sympathetic performer, you never felt that the choral items were interrupting her, but were a natural part of the flow. The choir sang admirably and effectively, making us thing about the music and its role in the drama rather than worrying about details of the performance.

The Dead – Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe – Wilton’s Music Hall (Photo: Kathleen Holman)