A challenging ode to James Joyce, that’s an impressive feat of memory and physicality.

In his final outpouring, Irish author James Joyce distilled his unfathomable literary genius into one of the most notoriously impenetrable works in modern literature, Finnegan’s Wake. Those hoping to leave Olwen Fouéré’s one-woman tribute to Joyce’s final book with a heightened understanding of the literary work may be disappointed, but that’s not to say that Riverrun isn’t, in its own way, illuminating.

As the audience enter the small studio theatre of Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 2, Fouéré is already on stage. An icy, dull light falls on the solitary figure, a stony sentinel, stood on a bleak, grey coastline. A chalky, powdered shore stretches across the space, out of which a twisted microphone stand, like a piece of driftwood, juts surreally out of the surf, like a line of Joyce’s prose, inexplicable but there none the less.

In the background we hear the rumbling, distant sound of waves breaking, as if a seashell is being held up to our ears.

As the audience settle, Fouéré slowly, deliberately removes her shoes and walks through the dusty sea to approach the microphone. From here she delivers her arresting performance;...