Misses Liffey

Buy a book in brown paper 
From Faber & Faber 
To see Annie Liffey 
trip, tumble and caper. 

Sevensinns in her singthings,
Plurabelle on her prose,
Seashell ebb music
wayriver she flows

To celebrate 100 years since women's suffrage was introduced in Ireland, our new show Misses Liffey celebrates the female characters within the works of James Joyce. In Misses Liffey, Anna Livia Plurabelle, the female personification of the River Liffey, will bring us on her journey from little cloud, through the city of Dublin and out in to Dublin Bay. Anna introduces us to many of Joyce’s women that live, work, sing, long and laugh along her banks. We hear from Nuvoletta and the Washerwomen in Finnegans Wake, the Morkan Sisters and Eveline from Dubliners and the siren barmaids and the seaside girls in Ulysses. Anna finally bids us farewell as she meets her cold, mad father - the sea, only to fin again, begin again…

James Joyce filled his work with music and in Finnegans Wake alone there are almost 1000 song references and allusions. Throughout his work, Joyce gives us a picture of Dublin in full song from the comic ballad, folk song, music hall, nursery rhyme, opera and sea shanties. A visitor asked Joyce if Finnegans Wake was a blending of literature and music to which he answered flatly ‘No, it’s pure music.’ These songs help create dreamlike transformations that bring us through the cycle of life, death and resurrection and express the ambience peculiar to the city of Dublin.

 Darina and Sinead are best known for their award-winning show ‘Songs of Joyce’

 - a musical extravaganza with songs drawn from the life and works of James Joyce. Since 2010, they have created a number of musical performances based on Joyce’s major works – Ulysses, Dubliners, Finnegans Wake and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and toured internationally to critical acclaim including Boston, New York, Budapest, Prague, Trieste, San Sebastian and Moscow