The Tower

The ghosts of James Joyce (Tom Hickey) and Oliver St John Gogarty (Bosco Hogan) return to haunt the Martello tower in Sandycove, there to bicker about art, their sundered friendship and their respective legacies. Joe Joyce’s two-hander is a tragicomic piece that occasionally diverts into the realms of the surreal, such as when the terse Joyce and the loquacious Gogarty duet on a croaky version of the Beatles’ Help!. The overall tone is one of bitterness and regret, however: the prissily self-righteous Joyce bemoaning Gogarty’s “witless witticisms”, while Gogarty berates Joyce as a parasite who fed on the misery of others. In the newly reopened Focus, Hickey and Hogan reprise their roles from previous productions, with the director, Caroline FitzGerald, allowing the pair to plough their well-worn furrows. It’s a wise decision, as both actors are comfortable in the skins of their characters, but also highly attuned to the nuances of each other’s performance. The result is that, despite the sedate pace and frequent digressions into deft wordplay, the production crackles with tension as both men strive to establish retrospective vindication of their actions.