Also this issue: Last Chance A look at two don’t-miss gallery shows closing soon. -Susan Hagen Artsbeat -Debra Auspitz Sir Thomas Allen -David Shengold Paradise City Arts Festival -Brian White The Fabled 13th Puppet Uprising -Juliet Fletcher Some Like It Hot -David Anthony Fox Big Love -Toby Zinman Doug Anderson -David Warner

April 3- 9, 2003

artpicks

James Joyce is Dead and so is Paris

Closer to Baz Luhrmann's notion of freaky folly and red-curtain rock-out than, say, the snazzy Fosse-isms of Chicago, James Joyce Is Dead and So Is Paris examines the life of Joyce's mentally deranged dancer daughter, Lucia, during the famed author's post-Ulysses triumph in the infamous boho Paris of the 1920s. OK, maybe it doesn't follow the schizophrenic Lucia's story to the letter. In the hands of Pig Iron Theatre Company founders Dito van Reigersberg and Quinn Bauriedel, director Dan Rothenberg, author Deborah Stein and composer James Sugg -- joined by the kids from avant bluegrassers She-Haw, Traffic Jam's Brad Trojan and Ben Edwards of the Ben Edwards Trio -- Lucia's life becomes one of unrepentant rock 'n' roll, wanton promiscuity and delusional behavior more akin to Light of Day or Footloose. You know, the rebel kid, smarter and hipper and more talented than her parents -- that sort of thing. My guess is, though, with this lot, the unraveling life of Lucia Joyce and her heavy metal band will be hipper, if not gnarlier, than Joan Jett or Kevin Bacon.

James Joyce Is Dead and So Is Paris: The Lucia Joyce Show, April 9-26, $12-$20, Christ Church Annex, Second and Church sts., 215-627-1883.

—A.D. Amorosi