Theatre in Review: Exiles (The MAP Theatre at ART/New York Theatres)

	Rodd Cyrus, Layla Khoshnoudi. Photo: George Vail

We can all agree, I think, that James Joyce was not natively a playwright, and not just because Exiles, his only dramatic work, languished for decades after it was first published in 1918. (It was rejected by the Abbey Theatre -- its adultery-ridden plot probably gave Lady Gregory a bad case of the vapors -- and even now is rarely produced.) As you probably know, his unhappy involvement in an amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest, staged in Zurich -- an affair that ended in teachers and lawsuits -- is the basis for Tom Stoppard's brilliantly eccentric farce Travesties. Clearly, the man who revolutionized the twentieth-century novel form was a prose artist through and through.

For confirmation, look on any page of Exiles, where you will find treats like: "My son, a child of sin and shame! There were tongues here ready to tell all, to embitter withering minds against me and Bertha and our godless nameless child." Or this: "She lies on my bed. I look at her body which I betrayed -- grossly and many times. And loved, too, and wept over. And I know that her body was always mine. To me, to me only she gave... " Or this: "I have wounded my soul for you -- a deep wound of doubt which can never be healed." Critics have sometimes compared Exiles to the dramas of Ibsen and Strindberg but with deep-purple dialogue like this, it sounds more like the work of Elinor Glyn, Joyce's contemporary and the Danielle Steel of her era, a specialist in heavy-breathing tales of sin and redemption. One can only imagine what, say, Molly Bloom would say about the tortured pronouncements listed above; her words would probably be unprintable here but would likely be accompanied by a wicked, derisive cackle.

It's difficult to know what attraction this material held for the people at the theatre company known as The MAP because Zachary Elkind's production provides little more than a surface reading. The action turns on the troubled relationship of Richard Rowan and his mistress Bertha, the exiles of the title. Having fled Ireland to escape the scandal of their irregular relationship, which has produced a son, they have spent several years, not entirely happily, in Rome. They're back in Dublin, where Richard is, surprisingly, in line for an academic appointment. Helping to arrange the job is Robert Hand, a journalist and Richard's old partner in hellraising. Robert's intentions are not unselfish; he wants to get his hands on Bertha. This fairly standard triangle gets a lively kick when we realize that Richard and Bertha discuss everything about Robert's pursuit; as a capper, Richard urges Bertha to follow through, meeting Robert for a clandestine assignation and reporting back all the juicy details.

To be sure, all this talk of free love brings little happiness; then again, it's hard to understand what motivates the characters, because desire hardly seems to come into it, Richard and Bertha are a version of Joyce and Nora Barnacle, his unlettered paramour (and, eventually, his wife). Bertha, who is similarly uneducated, is often described by critics as "an earth mother" but Layla Khoshnoudi's performance displays no such qualities. She seems to be pretty much on an even footing with Richard, intellectually and in terms of class, which begs the question of why she puts up with his marital shenanigans. As far as one can make out, Richard's soul is wound up into a corkscrew of lust and guilt, but Jeffrey Omura's performance is too prim for such upsetting emotions. Rodd Cyrus has the right seductive manner as Robert, but he and Khoshnoudi strike very few sparks. One misses any sense of the intentions driving this tortured trio. Their performances have a certain polish that proves counterproductive; sex and its dangerous implications seem to have been left behind somewhere along the Via Veneto.

When every performance in a production feels off -- I've seen Omura and Khoshnoudi do much better work -- the responsibility usually lies with the director. Elkind's modern-dress staging, complete with girl-pop anthems and EDM on the sound system, tries to contemporize a story rooted in the repressions of early twentieth-century Irish-Catholic society; as a result, neither the play's humor nor anguish comes to the fore. I have a sneaking suspicion Exiles isn't a superior piece of work, but another production might make a much better argument for it.

Cate McCrea's set design, featuring cloth walls and the minimal use of furniture, works well enough and is lit nicely by Amara Payton McNeil. If dressing the characters in contemporary clothing isn't ideal, at least Alyssa Korol does so attractively. The production also features Violeta Picayo in the thankless role of Robert's wife Beatrice, and Mattie Tindall as Richard and Bertha's maid and their little boy Archie.

What we're left with is a lot of talk, most of it flowery and stilted, reaching too self-consciously for poetry. This is, nevertheless, a chance to catch this rarely seen work and I can imagine that Joyce fans and scholars will want to seek it out. Would an intensively directed, period-accurate production make a difference? Possibly. Whether anyone will tackle such a challenge remains an open question. --David Barbour