Featuring themes of exile, persecution and diasporic dispersal, the Irish and Jewish stories have long been subjected to a variety of comparative readings. In literature, these stories most famously coalesce in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), whose Irish Jewish protagonist Leopold Bloom embodies the myriad of continuities and contradictions inherent in Judaic and Gaelic narratives of identity. The contexts surrounding Bloom and his creation have been unpacked in volumes such as Ira B. Nadel's Joyce and the Jews (1989) and Marilyn Reizbaum's James Joyce's Judaic Other (1999), while Cormac Ó Gráda's Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce (2006) takes the multifaceted figure as a starting point for a wider socioeconomic evaluation. However, as with any distinct groups, there is a necessary limit to how far comparisons between the Irish and Jewish peoples can in fact be taken. Ronit Lentin's work foregrounds Ireland's despicable record of anti-Semitism, which puts paid to any simplistic sense of affinity, while Elizabeth Butler Cullingford warns against the dangers of analogies; a process of analogizing can not only “elide historical differences or asymmetries of power,” but it can also ultimately “appear racist or falsely totalizing” (Watt 133).Footnote ¹

Despite these potential pitfalls, Stephen Watt's book offers a new contribution to the conversation. And although Joyce features heavily, Watt's particular interest lies in “circum-Atlantic” literature, ranging from melodramatic theatre to popular music to the contemporary novel form. This wide range is an aspect that Watt foregrounds, describing the book as a “series of wanderings” (x) composed of “small, floating narrative sections” (168) free from any strict temporal or formal confines. As such, employing his magpie eye for overlaps between the Irish and Jewish communities, Watt lays out his treasure trove of findings – from the Seán O'Casey allusion in Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question (2010), to Debra Messing's attempt at an Irish accent in John Patrick Shanley's Outside Mullingar (2014), to Arthur Miller's all-but-forgotten “Irish play” A Memory of Two Mondays (1955).

Given Watt's background (he is currently adjunct professor of theatre, drama, and contemporary dance at Indiana University, Bloomington), the sections on theatre are the most successful. Chapter 2, “The Cultural Work of Immigrant Melodrama,” examines the impact of those Irish who emigrated to the United States in the wake of the Great Famine, and how traditional depictions of this group – once laced with prejudice and stereotype – came under increasing pressure. By unpacking a number of alternative Irish characters and writers to emerge at this time, Watt suggests a “revised understanding of the middle nineteenth-century American stage” (54) in which “immigrant melodrama … acted as an entertaining counterdiscourse to … imperialism” (55). Chapter 3, “Allo-Semitism and the Performative Uncanny,” elucidates a similar revision of Jewish characters and the depiction thereof, whilst also emphasizing the performative nature of Jewish and Irish identities alike. One of the most enlightening sections charts the development in the portrayal of (and reaction to) Shakespeare's Shylock – a development which began as far back as 1741 when Irish actor Charles Macklin radically subverted what had previously been a strictly comedic role.

Macklin's performance not only marks a significant turning point, but also serves – according to Watt – as “yet another uncanny instance … of Irish Jewishness” (103). However, this is where the book strikes a more uncomfortable note. For although Watt seeks to challenge overly simplistic readings of the role that Jewish and Irish individuals played in American literature and its development, at times he risks lapsing into overly simplistic classifications himself. The phrase “Irish-Jewishness” recurs throughout. This is a hyphenated hybrid which should denote a very specific, Bloom-esque combination of nationality and religion, but which is in fact applied liberally to almost any instance of Irish and Jewish individuals simply coming into contact, be it on a stage, on a page or as a mutual source of inspiration. Even Joyce himself is described as “the most famous Irish Jew of the modern era” (17), a claim as problematic as it is simply incorrect.

Elsewhere, theories of “diaspora,” “cosmopolitanism,” “multi-directional memory” and “colonialism” are mentioned with a conspicuous lack of acknowledgement of the plethora of complications inherent in each. Only once does Watt hesitate when discussing literary comparisons of the Northern Irish Troubles and the Holocaust, admitting that “all contextualizations of contemporary traumas with the Shoah are not equally valid or efficacious” (196, original emphasis). However, he soon concludes that “whatever the risk, [it] is well worth taking,” before swiftly wandering off to explore another idea, another Irish-Jewish anecdote. As such, it lies with readers of Watt's work to evaluate whether the risk is worth taking. There is no denying that his volume includes an impressive range of examples and astute theatrical observations, many of which gesture towards fertile points of interaction between Irish and Jewish art and artists. But for some, the unquestioning recourse to problematic labels may ultimately prove more “dreadful” than “grand.”