Theatre Review by Daniel Boyle
James Joyce: Exiles, Directed by Carl Whiteside,
Produced by Bloomsday in Melbourne at 45 Downstairs 15-25 June 2023.
There should be a Latin motto to the effect of ‘beware of writers’. In June, 1904, Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway, met the young Irish writer, James Joyce. They courted, fell in love and Joyce persuaded Nora to elope with him to the continent where they lived for the rest of their lives. Nora was his love, his muse, the mother of his children and, belatedly, his married wife. Joyce was a fiendishly ambitious writer and an enthusiast for the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. I wonder if her name “Nora” was part of his attraction to her. Joyce’s enthusiasm for Ibsen culminates in the creation of his only produced play “Exiles”. The main characters in the play – Richard Rowan and his unwed partner, Bertha, mirror Joyce and Nora’s lives to a somewhat confronting degree.
In the play, the writer character, Richard, encourages his Bertha to dally with an old friend who has invited Richard back to Dublin in 1912, ostensibly with the promise of an academic post but is, in fact, intent on seducing Bertha. Richard encourages this, partly out of seeking real-life drama to convert into literature, but also to experiment with ideas of free love, exploring the dynamics of relationships and defying social norms.
Bloomsday in Melbourne’s production of Exiles at 45 Downstairs, was exuberantly performed with a wisely cut-down script that focused on the essentials of the situation and avoided the melodrama and Irish sentimentally of the complete text. This production departed from the conventional proscenium arch performance by thrusting the stage between two raked tiers. This brought the stage action and emotional force of the performance up close, personal and, at times, extremely confronting. The actors all performed with great energy and commitment. The tension of the drama was cleverly mitigated by comical turns of the son character, Archie (Caithlin O’Loghlen), the ever-watchful housekeeper (Linda Cookson) and Robert Hand (Soren Jenson) as the increasingly hapless would-be seducer. Director Carl Whiteside’s comic flair was on full display.
Doug Lyons as Richard Rowan brilliantly conveyed his character’s complex emotions of pride and jealousy, creative fever, obsessional love, perversity and, ultimately, of his own folly. Lucy Payne as the much put-upon Bertha, performed with assurance and decorum, leaving the audience at the end of the play with the impression she has many more erotic adventures to pursue. Soren Jensen brilliantly presented the various sides of Robert Hand from two-faced friend, bogus romantic to fool for love. Mary Agnes-O’Loghlin as Beatrice Justice made the most of her minor role. Her character conveyed the sense that she realises she has got herself into a tangled situation with Richard and Bertha.
James Joyce’s Exiles has a disastrous production history, rejected at different times by W B Yeats and George Bernard Shaw no less. Finally, it was resurrected by Harold Pinter in 1970 and subsequently revived over the intervening decades. It’s difficult to establish what the initial objections to the play were exactly. Was the play’s situation truly that scandalous? If Joyce’s intention had been to detonate a cultural bomb with this play and had been thwarted, he had only to bide his time till the publication of Ulysses in 1922.
Sensibly and adroitly directed by Carl Whiteside, Bloomsday in Melbourne are to be congratulated for their courage and conviction in staging this problem play of all problem plays.
Daniel Boyle is a Melbourne-born actor and director who has spent decades involved in theatre. Of Irish descent, he spent two weeks in Ireland five years ago. He is a member of the Finnegans Wake Reading Circle.
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