Samuel Beckett and the Rainbow Girl: Genius, Love, Madness, Violence in 1920s Paris

The centrepiece of our Bloomsday in Melbourne Festival in 2024 is 

Samuel Beckett and the Rainbow Girl

By Steve Carey

Directed by Carl Whiteside

It's late 1920s Paris, and Lucia, muse and only daughter of notorious banned novelist James Joyce, is poised to succeed as a daringly original dancer. 

Into this dysfunctional artistic household arrives alluring young Dubliner Samuel Beckett – enigmatic, hypereducated, a writer seeking his own literary voice. 

He finds himself drawn into the older writer’s web… and at the same time becomes the reluctant subject of Lucia’s increasingly obsessive amorous gaze. 

A series of romantic misunderstandings, at first comic but increasingly tragic, strip Lucia of her nascent career and her family and love interest both lost to her, she spirals into madness.

Note: content warning for coarse language; depictions of mental illness; the consumption of alcohol; and violence.