“Unless you glide among the upper echelons of New York society, you are not likely to attend a holiday gathering in a more sumptuous setting this season,” wrote the New York Times critic Charles Isherwood in 2016. He was referring to the premiere of The Dead, 1904, an adaptation of James Joyce’s 1914 novella by Paul Muldoon and Jean Hanff Korelitz. For this production, the Irish Repertory Theater has transformed the American Irish Historical Society, a former private residence from the early 1900s, into the home of the Morkan sisters. The 57-person audience is welcomed into Morkan’s Feast of the Epiphany soirée, moving from floor to floor as the action unfolds around them. At dinner, guests sit at long tables alongside the characters, feasting on fig-glazed beef, bread pudding, and other dishes drawn from Joyce’s writing. Golden light fills the rooms as live piano plays, gossip is exchanged, the quadrille is danced, and the story is embodied. Ciarán O’Reilly directs. —Jeanne Malle