The 31 st annual Bloomsday in Melbourne staged a play at St Martin’s Theatre in South Yarra exploring the encounter between Samuel Beckett and the Joyce family in 1920s Paris. Review by Philip Harvey The symbiotic relationship between an artist and their work is notorious in the case of James Joyce. Himself, his family and friends make major character appearances in his great fictions, albeit oblique, typified, parodied, and exaggerated to serve the author’s purposes. Similarly, his family and acquaintances are caught up in the creative act itself, for good or ill. This relationship, and its real-life consequences, are the driver of this year’s Bloomsday in Melbourne play, an informed drama about Joyce’s daughter Lucia (Mary Agnes O’Loughlin) and the unknown young turk fresh from Dublin, Samuel Beckett (Jeremy Harland). Steve Carey’s play employs varied modes to dramatize the conjunction between the everyday and high art. A comic café dialogue between litterateurs using a cornuc