It was all a dream! Dermot Bolger’s effective adaptation of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses reconstructs the novel as if it is being dreamed by Leopold Bloom. Doing so means it can start and finish with Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy and make that evocative speech the narrative thread.

The opening scene has Molly (Muireann Kelly) in her much loved bed, and it is evident from the start that this Molly is all for fun. She talks directly to us which is rather unnerving. Isn’t this an internal monologue, dreamy in nature and murmured seductively? The words are so fruity and become quite explicit – Molly would never have spoken them aloud. But this is the way it goes, with a focus on the sexy bits of the book, and some fabulous characterisations from the strong ensemble cast.

The set is a busy arc of cabinets, drawers, cupboards and windows through which people can enter, peek, shout or sing. It evokes the Martello Tower in which the hapless Stephen Dedalus (Michael Dylan) endures Buck Mulligan. There is a lot of playfulness in Andy Arnold’s direction. The cat is represented by a swish of a scarf, The Citizen’s dog by a smoke machine. There is a pleasing simplicity to the use of props too; a ladder becomes a pulpit, a diving board, a hovel.

The narrative largely follows the chronology of the book, with sequences such as The Sirens – a nice call of ‘Sirens please’ to introduce it – and lots of lovely close harmony singing. The climax of the first half is the Cyclops story, with Bloom escaping from the bigoted Citizen in the pub, who sends the glasses flying.

The second half (yes, an interval, in Edinburgh!) opens with the Nausicaa episode and Bloom masturbating on the beach while the provocative Gerty (Mary Murray) displays her, erm, wares. Cue fireworks. Then comes a hallucinatory vision of the brothel scene, in which the madam Bella Cohen is played with great relish by Grant Smeaton, wearing a lobster pot and effecting a German accent. He looks alarmingly like Benny Hill. Poor Bloom (Jean-Paul Van Cauwelaert) gets fisted (I said it focuses on the ‘durty’ stuff).

At last Bloom and Stephen get to walk together after narrowly avoiding arrest, and this is a welcome moment of calm and a sort of epiphany for Bloom. He can relate to Stephen more than any other character and be a father to a boy – his own son having died when a baby, the consequence of which has made it impossible for him to make love to Molly.

We end with the remainder of Molly’s monologue, describing her lover Blazes Boylan (a fine performance by Stephen Clyde) and remembering the time she first said ‘yes’ to Leopold on Howth Head.

All the cast in their various roles are highly watchable. Maeve Fitzgerald in particular is a total delight. The lighting, costumes, sound design and choreography are all top class and make for a grand afternoon of theatre. There is some odd switching from behind the fourth wall to a direct approach to us in the audience, which doesn’t sit well with the traditional presentation. But that’s a small caveat. It’s not easy to stage such an epic, complex and multi-layered text so successfully. And it is the language that shines throughout. ‘The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.’ It’s enough to move a grown man to tears.