Arts Week with Judy Murphy

The remarkable life of Galway’s Nora Barnacle – later Nora Joyce – is celebrated in the one-woman show A Rare Journey; Nora Joyce’s Odyssey, which comes to the city’s Town Hall Theatre on May 13.

The 75-minute drama will bring the audience through Nora’s extraordinary life, giving full rein to her razor-sharp and often lethal wit, and featuring songs and music that she and her husband, author James Joyce, loved.

A Rare Journey separates Nora from her famous literary alter-ego, Molly Bloom, and dispels the sometimes lazy myths that have often cast Nora as an appendage of her famous husband.

This is Nora’s story, and Paula Greevy-Lee’s aim in writing it was to separate the reality of this complex, compassionate and intelligent woman from the half-truths that have dogged her since her death in 1951, aged 67.

An experienced actor, this was Paula’s first venture into playwriting and premiered at premiered at Dublin’s Smock Alley Theatre June 2022, returning there by invitation the following year, before enjoying a successful run at Cork Arts Theatre in 2024.  Her aim is to tour it to places which were connected with Joyce and Nora, and she’s delighted to be coming to Galway.

The action begins in in 1946, five years after James Joyce’s death, as Nora is preparing to meet a young American journalist for lunch in a café in Zurich.

Wary of journalists and anxious about what questions she might be asked about life with her famous husband, Nora ‘rehearses’ for the encounter by retracing the exhilarating highs and best-left-unsaid lows of her extraordinary life since the fateful day in 1904 on Nassau Street when she locked eyes with the eager and cocky young man she was destined to spend her life with.

They eloped to Europe, where they had two children, Georgio and Lucia. In the piece, she reminisces on their many moves across the continent, children in tow, sometimes fleeing from war and sometimes from unpaid bills.

As Paula remarks, “Nora was the rock that enabled Jim to keep writing”.

The Galwaywoman observed and, in this piece, offers a rich commentary on the antics of all the wealthy and famous people who played a part in their lives.

A Rare Journey is directed by Paula’s husband, actor, author and director, Gerard Lee. The performance in Galway will be followed by a post-show discussion with the two of them.

Tickets are €18/€16, plus booking fee, and are available at tht.ie, 091569777 or from the box office.

Pictured: Paula Greevey-Lee in the one-woman show.