Written by Richard Fredman

Performed by: Patrick Morris

Directed by: Rachel Aspinwall

FIVE STARS from The Edinburgh Reporter: ‘fascinating, entertaining…a breathtakingly skilful performance‘  

‘an outstanding study of our need for identity, and of how that need can overflow into hatred and horror. This is not just something that happened in history books. It is happening now.’

Read the full review here and see our new teaser video here. 

2019 saw bloominauschwitz headlining the Bloomsday Festival in Dublin, as international guests of the James Joyce Centre.  With two sellout performances at the New Theatre, it was a great privilege to bring Bloom home. 

This followed on from a run at the Edinburgh Fringe 2018 where it played at the Just Festival @ St John’s (Venue 127) and the Manchester Jewish Museum’s Festival of Leaving, performing it in a former Sephardi synagogue.    

Menagerie commissioned and developed this new piece over a 3-year period. We previewed it at several venues in 2015, when it won BEST NEW PLAY AWARD at the Brighton Fringe.  The final preview was a special invitation to the international Progressive Theatre Festival at the Czech National Theatre, Brno, in October 2015.

Written by Richard Fredman, bloominauschwitz imagines Leopold Bloom breaking free of James Joyce’s great novel ‘Ulysses’ to re-discover his Jewish roots.  Bloom bounds back and forth through time, straight through Europe’s faultlines of identity, belonging and collective memory.  bloominauschwitz is an explosive piece of theatre right from the start, though it confounds audience expectations in the process.  Mixing clownish antics with high drama, rich text and powerful imagery, it features Menagerie’s own Patrick Morris in a tour-de-force role as Bloom.

Click here for review in ‘A Younger Theatre’

The play is a major piece of new writing from Richard Fredman, directed by Rachel Aspinwall, and together with Patrick, they have been at the centre of the project since its inception.

Click here for a gallery of photos from our performance in Brno, Czech Republic.