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Drama

Exiles: by James Joyce. Unity Theatre. Directed by Ralph McAllister. April 19 — May 4.

Reviewed by Martin Edmond.

"Why the title Exiles? A nation exacts a penance from those who dare to leave her payable on their return." This from Joyce's own notes for his only play. The familiarity of the accent should not obscure how seriously Joyce made and worked with such statements. So much so, that in this work at least it can become tiresome. Large significances are barely even indicated in the sparseness of the language; it is as if the script is only a skeleton and the body must be given by the actors, in the depth they give to individual characters and their interactions.

You could apply that metaphor to much dramatic writing of course, but the trend is very marked in this example. Apparently, this may be its New Zealand premiere, though it was written in 1914. I felt this was probably because the play was almost unperformable, that it was too demanding for stage presentation. Unity's production is good enough to prove me wrong. If the precise weighting and interrelation of characters that Joyce imagined is not entirely reproduced on stage, the play we do get is at least satisfying in its own right.

Briefly, it is the story of Richard Rowan, another semi-autobiographical figure in the line of Stephen Daedalus and Gabriel Conroy (of 'The Dead'). After nine years in exile he has returned to Ireland with Bertha, the woman he took away with him. These two are joined by Beatrice and Robert, cousins, friends who remained behind. All four are involved in Richard's 'struggles to free himself from all bondages'. The attempt is to somehow live beyond the morality of convention, within themselves, and to grasp the difficult freedoms the rejection involves. This is the "exile" of the title. The dramatic focus is, superficially, on the question of adultery — Robert with Bertha and perhaps, Richard with Beatrice. A deeper conflict is concealed. I mean, if your actions and your emotional directions are not formed in relation to convention, how are they formed? How is love to be an honesty and a commitment? Robert's 'passion' and 'nature' cannot fit the free space Richard tries to build for all their lives. It is only enough for Bertha as a complement to the stranger and deeper bond between her and Richard — a bond, which, if it is beyond morality in essence and conception, must operate in some conventional framework. The spring of suffering in Richard, his 'wound', is in his desire to be the wronged husband, the cuckold. The complications are endless and probably unresolved. Robert must leave, Beatrice fades, Richard and Bertha are left with their young love behind them, an unknown perhaps empty future ahead.

The weight of the play falls on the central figure of Richard. In the Unity production he is an odd figure, much of the time appearing so queer as to be ridiculous. This is perhaps a serious fault. I am sure, anyway, that the man Malcolm George plays is not the man Joyce imagined. It is admittedly very difficult. He must be very different, and the differences must be both admirable and perplexing. He does not have enough of the strength here. What should be an uncompromising intellectual and emotional rigour, comes across too often as petulance. And there is something of the literary eccentric in his appearance which comes down to being a paraody of Joyce himself. It's impossible not to laugh when he enters every time — and the obvious debt the others owe him, serves to belittle him rather than to build him. It's a pity, since Jean Packman's Bertha is a woman of such presence, of such sensitivity. There is more than a hint of Molly Bloom in her, as well as the freshness and vulnerability of someone younger and less battered —that innocence which Richard has nurtured but cannot (or will not) now protect, that Robert cannot help but love. Bruce Tidswell as Robert is excellent too. What seems at first to be an aging sentimentality becomes a commitment, as far as he is able, to the struggle Richard has outlined. His tragedy, and we see it on stage, is that he can only fight in his intimacy with Bertha and Richard. Without them he is something less and something sadder. The fourth figure in this dance about the unattainable, Beatrice (Christie Black stone) comes through with less subtelty. Her main roles, as Richard's intellectual confidant and as Richard's lover, are over when the play begins. To some extent, therefore, she must appear more rigid than the others, as she fades from an individual to a type.

I think I have said enough to indicate that this is finally a worthwhile production. Enough of the delicacy is caught, enough of the talking is informed by the subtelty of the dance. On a purely technical level it is more than competent, allowing one to go through the formal re-stained drama where the conflicts are lived. I like the way in that theatre, everything is so much there without either imposition or self-deprecation. The production has an authenticity, a precision, the clean lines that Joyce has made as well as the darker convolutions lying between and behind them.