Exiles

Synopsis

Back in Dublin after nine years abroad, Richard and Bertha have to confront two other people who love them, and ask themselves questions about guilt and responsibility. Will infidelity hold them together? Exiles is a startlingly modern picture of marriage, based in part on Joyce's own relationship with Nora Barnacle. His only play, it was written in 1914 during his own self-imposed exile from Ireland, between Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses.

Our Review:

3 August 2006

The only play James Joyce wrote – apart from an early lost piece - was Exiles, completed in 1915, first produced in Munich in 1919 and in London in 1926. Harold Pinter rescued it from obscurity in a production at the Mermaid Theatre (later at the Aldwych) in 1970. James Macdonald’s tightly wound revival in the National’s Cottesloe goes a long way towards explaining Pinter’s interest in the play, as well as honouring its inherent value.

Partly an autobiographical account of Joyce’s relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, the common-law marriage of Richard Rowan, a writer, and Bertha, some kind of Irish man magnet, is tested when they return to Dublin after an absence of nine years. Richard’s best friend Robert Hand, a journalist, propositions Bertha, having arranged for Richard to be elsewhere during their tryst. But Bertha has told Richard about her attraction to his friend, and he turns up too. This is a battle of two men’s souls, says Robert: “of y...

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Latest User Review

82.43.198.16) - 13 October 2006:

If I give could zero stars, I would! I've never been so bored at the theatre in all my life. This is turgid self-indulgent nonsense and whilst I wouldn't want to take anything away from the actors, I nevertheless want to spare my decent theatregoing peers a night of utter boredom....

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