When I told people I was going to see a staged adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, the frequent response was a sharp eyebrow raise and a: “that should be interesting.” This is a 783-page novel of much-hyped obscurity that people don’t say they are “reading” but rather “wresting with.”

The new production by Krymov Lab NYC, Metamorphoses (or A Few Ways of Keeping a Child from Running Around at His Great Uncle’s Funeral) is a shit show—literally. It includes a dozen raven puppets repeatedly pooping what looked like globs of sunscreen on the heads of the poor cast.