A struggle against Dublin society in 1912 creates two moral outcasts
Exiles Cottesloe Theatre, London SE1
James Joyce never saw a production of his only stage play. Written in 1914-15, Exiles eventually premièred in Munich just after the Great War, but Joyce, stranded in Zurich, was unable to see it because of wartime visa restrictions. It received poor reviews. However, it was "rediscovered" in 1970 by Harold Pinter, who directed it with a stellar cast including John Wood, Vivien Merchant and Timothy West, and now it no longer seems surprising that it should be acclaimed as a major work. Perhaps Exiles was just written too early to be appreciated in its own times: with its frank arguments for the abandonment of social morality and its depiction of liberal values, peppered with a good deal of dangerously sexual behaviour, this play might have sprung straight from the patchouli-scented atmosphere of Woodstock.
However, James Macdonald's thoughtful production at the National grounds Joyce's vision firmly within 1912 Dublin. In Hildegard Bechtler's design, this is a rain-lashed world of flocked wallpaper, pianos furnished with candlesticks, and a chaise longue whose velvet suggestiveness is brought up short by a brace of hard-backed chairs. Only the sunlight, sumptuously drawn by Peter Mumford but permanently kept at bay with dark blinds, is a reminder of the blinding passion of the four main protagonists.
Exiles tells the story of two men of letters: Richard Rowan, a novelist, and Robert Hand, a journalist. One a sceptic, the other an aesthete, they are like two sides of the same coin. Richard's wife, Bertha, fascinates them both; yet Richard (Peter McDonald) is also drawn to Robert's cousin Beatrice (Marcella Plunkett), a music teacher and his quondam muse. Richard and Bertha have just returned from Rome, where they lived for nine years with their son.
But that is not the only point of the title; Joyce is more concerned with what happens when an individual knowingly breaks a social code and delivers himself into moral exile. Robert (played with menacing skill by Adrian Dunbar) is hell-bent on seducing Bertha (a luminous Dervla Kirwan). He does it pretty well, too, coming to call on his friend's wife with a large bunch of overblown roses and an array of equally ripe flatteries. He kisses her hand, then her eyelids, then her mouth full-on. He arranges a tryst; he does not care about betraying his friend. He and Bertha will meet at his cottage for a night of passion.
Prior to Bertha's arrival, Robert moves around his love nest, arranging everything just so. He plays a bar or two of Wagner on the piano; he sprays scent around the room. If he weren't so predatory, the scene would be hilarious. When the tap on the door comes, he practically leaps from his chair in sexual anticipation. But, to his horror, the caller is Richard, the would-be cuckolded husband. We know that Bertha has told him everything. But Richard is not dismayed: a lifelong philanderer himself, he is excited by the thought of Bertha making love to Robert, and when eventually she arrives he insists that Robert go through with the plan.
Does Robert seduce Bertha? Joyce leaves us hanging on the journalist's fly-button; the bedroom upstairs is illuminated, but whether Bertha is ravished within it, is not.
Naturally, when play resumes in the final act, the two men are no more liberated than before. Richard is still yearning after Beatrice, Robert after Bertha. Indeed, the only unshackled spirit is Richard's young son Archie. Joyce, a master of the child's voice, portrays him perfectly; gambolling about the place, Thomas Grant plays him delightfully, a wide-eyed urchin in a Peter Pan collar.
Bertha, as her name implies, is Ireland herself - the natal isle from which both men, in the end, are estranged, Robert to self-imposed exile in England and Richard to brood in his study within an equally self-orchestrated world of "wounded doubt". It probably would have been much easier for both men to follow the moral code of those times; but, the times being what they were then, they could not.
For further info and booking details visit www.nationaltheatre.org.uk
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