Joyce’s collection of short stories provides vivid ‘slices of life’ of early 20th century Dublin. Against the backdrop of a society in paralysis, a pair of Dublin lives are revealed in stark, sometimes brutal, scenes. In Counterparts, an ungainly, bad-tempered law clerk is determined to have a heavy night’s drinking, while in A Little Cloud, a sensitive soul is embittered by a meeting with an old university friend back from London. The stories are populated with an array of colourful characters who remain entirely contemporary.

Performed by Jim Roche and Liam Hourican in the iconic setting of the Joyce Centre’s Georgian drawing room, this is an exquisite, intimate study of Joyce’s Dublin and its lives of quiet desperation.