Synopsis
Lucia Joyce | Synopsis
Prologue
A divided stage: in two different rooms, two matches are struck. In a 1980s study, under a portrait of his grandfather, Stephen Joyce takes letters from an old trunk, reads, tosses them in the fire. In the 1929 sitting room, under a portrait of her father, Lucia Joyce dances.
ACT I
THE JOYCE RESIDENCE, SQUARE ROBIAC, PARIS, NOVEMBER 1928
Lucia Joyce, daughter of famous writer James Joyce, is being hindered from her dream of being a dancer by her father, who is making her help him write his major opus Finnegans Wake. She meets and falls in love with Samuel Beckett, who sees in Lucia a way to gain access to her father. .
ACT II
THE BAL BULLIER DANCE COMPETITION / LA CLOSERIE DES LILAS, PARIS, MAY 1929
Lucia dances at the Bal Bullier dance competition. Beckett, now Lucia’s lover, describes to the nearly-blind James his daughter’s dancing. Lucia wins second prize, causing a protest from the crowd. In the afterparty, things become contentious within Lucia’s family; she convinces Beckett to leave with her.ACT III
ACT III
JOYCE RESIDENCE, SQUARE ROBIAC, PARIS, SEPTEMBER 1929 /
CALDER’S CIRCUS PRIVATE PERFORMANCE, PARIS, OCTOBER 1929
Emboldened by her success, Lucia has chosen a career as professional dancer, but suffers from the rigors of her ballet training. Faced with a choice between James and Lucia, Beckett, now Joyce’s assistant, chooses to stay with James instead of accompanying Lucia to see a ballet. The next morning, James forces him to come clean regarding his intentions with Lucia. Beckett confesses his motives were mixed; Lucia is devastated, and James casts Beckett out of the household. Lucia stops dancing; her mental health begins to decline as she flutters from one career idea and lover to another, amidst the frenzy of Parisian artistic soirees.
ACT IV
THE JOYCE RESIDENCE, OCTOBER 1938/Divided Stage— The Asylum, 1940’s/Stephen Joyce’s Study, 1980's
Beckett has just been stabbed and is in a coma. Nora, Giorgio, and a repentant James get ready to go to the hospital, but Giorgio forbids Lucia, who is visibly traumatized, to accompany them. Enraged, she falls prey to one of her visions, that have grown in intensity and frequency. She tries to set fire to the manuscript of Finnegans Wake, then to the apartment, but is unable to go through with it. Her final hallucination is that of the rest of her life, her forty years in an insane asylum, forsaken by her family, her letters burned by her nephew Stephen, and her story forever shrouded in mystery.