Bloomsday in Melbourne 2026 fortyfivedownstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne Review by Philip Harvey Written for the July 2026 issue of Tinteán, a Magazine for Irish Australia Google reports how a friend of Groucho Marx once discerned mention of the Marx Brothers in Finnegans Wake, albeit in the idiolect of wakese. Replying in a letter he seems honoured to be found in the novel, though is uncertain about James Joyce turning him into a verb. Elsewhere he writes. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t appear in Finnegans Wake. I’m certainly as bewildered about life as Joyce was.” This might look like the extent of the epistolary relationship, before dramatist Steve Carey conjured this year’s Bloomsday in Melbourne theatre work, a play founded on the discovery of a correspondence between the two men. The lures set up by such a cultural sensation drive the actions of the characters. Literally and thematically, the play is two-tiered. The stage’s upper tier exists in ...