Dubliner Bram Stoker on a Romanian stamp.
There is absolutely nothing Irish going on this week.
Wait for it.
April Fool!
Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s what’s really going on, starting this weekend.
Rose of Tralee! The 10th annual Philadelphia Rose of Tralee Selection night is Saturday, April 2, at the Springfield Country Club. A new Rose will be chosen and last year’s winner, Mairead Conley, will give up her crown. The chosen one will compete this August at the annual Rose of Tralee Festival in Tralee, County Kerry. This year’s Mary O’Connor Spirit Award, given by the Philadelphia Rose of Tralee Centre, will be shared by three local women, Pat Bonner, Frances Duffy, and Serena White.
Sebastian Barry’s play, “The Pride of Parnell Street,” continues at Act II Playhouse in Ambler.
Also on a run are the paintings of Irish artist T.C. Murphy at Colm Rowan Fine Art on South 10th Street in Philadelphia. This is Murphy’s second show in the US of his modern works that combine spirals, circles, pyramids, coils and waves on a palette of primary colors. The show starts on Sunday and runs through the end of April.
On Sunday, the Rosenbach Museum and Library has a special program called “James Joyce and Irish Authors” which will feature readings from Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” and other Irish writers. (You didn’t know Abraham “Bram” Stoker was Irish, did you? He was a Dubliner and his day job was acting as personal assistant to then famous actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London which Irving owned. Apparently, that wasn’t enough work for Stoker—he began writing short stories and novels of which “Dracula” is his most famous. He was in essence the Stephen King of his day; most of his stories and novels fall into the horror genre. Stoker had a newspaper background. He was also a theater critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, which is how he met Irving who hired him away. Oddly enough, Stoker the Dubliner has a Pennsylvania connection—the original manuscript of Dracula, thought to be lost, was found in the early 1980s in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania.)
Bonus: The Rosenbach has an original manuscript of “Ulysses” written in Joyce’s hand and Bram Stoker’s notes and outlines for “Dracula” as well as other Irish manuscripts that will be available for viewing. It’s like being in the presence of greatness. Just don’t touch.
The Rosenbach is the center of all things Joyce in the Philadelphia area. Every year on June 16, the Rosenbach hosts a day-long Bloomsday celebration to commemorate the day Leopold Bloom, Joyce’s “Ulysses” protaganist, spent wandering the streets of Dublin. Local actors and politicians – pardon us if that sounds redundant—read passages from the book from morning till night.
If you’re at the Rosenbach, check out its latest Joyce exhibition—“Exile Among Expats: James Joyce in Paris.” It’s a multi-media exhibition that includes pages from Joyce’s Ulysses, artist Man Ray’s portrait of Joyce, selection from fellow ex-pat and poet Ezra Pound’s “Island of Paris” report in “The Dial,” a literary magazine, and a first edition of “Ulysses” smuggled out of Paris into the US in 1922. (After it was serialized in the US magazine “The Little Review,” the book was banned in the US as obscene, hence the need to smuggle it in.)
On Tuesday, Celtic Woman’s Orla Fallon, now a solo act, will be appearing at the World Café Live on Tuesday night. A singer and harper from Knockananna, Ireland, she, like her Celtic Woman colleagues, is a major attraction on PBS.
We’re filling up the calendar for April and there’s some fun stuff on the way. Check it out.
