Exiles is by James Joyce, which suggests a certain marquee status, written as it was by one of the giants of twentieth-century literature.  It has no such status.  Completed in 1915, Exiles remained unstaged in Dublin until 1973, and it has not been revived in New York City since 1977.  Opinion hasn’t shifted much since 1981, when John MacNichols wrote, “It is generally agreed … that Exiles is a bad play, opaque to both reader and viewer.”

Joyce worshipped Ibsen, and Exiles is his attempt at Ibsenian drama.  Richard Rowan (Jeffrey Omura) and his common-law wife Bertha (Layla Khoshnoudi) have given each other “freedom,” and after returning from Rome to Dublin, Richard resumes a flirtation with a former lover, Beatrice Justice (Violeta Picayo).  Bertha is pursued by Richard’s friend Robert Hand (Rodd Cyrus), whose approach to seduction is excessive declarations of love.  Exiles removes the dramatic core of most infidelity stories—there are no secrets among these four—but it seems to make them no better at navigating their circumstances.  “We all confess to one another here,” Robert tells Bertha, and yet confession does not yield absolution.  The freedom they have given each other doesn’t give them all that much freedom.

Exiles is an interesting play, even more so because it provides the model for Harold Pinter’s masterpiece, Betrayal.  There is a terrific scene between Richard and Robert, where the adulterer feels betrayed by the cuckold because the cuckold has withheld his knowledge of the betrayal, which achieves perfection in Pinter.

The current revival by the MAP Theater, staged at A.R.T./New York Theatres, has a few good points.  I appreciated a neat trick with an umbrella filled with flower petals and opened by an actor, littering the stage and signaling a transition between scenes.  Late in the play, it is raining outside, and it sounds like a pot boiling, a nice metaphor for the drama.  Unfortunately, the two leads do not have chemistry, so their talk-filled foreplay never builds to anything compelling.  Perhaps due to under-rehearsal, there is also quite a bit of hand acting.

I do think there is something worthwhile to be found in Exiles, but this production, directed by Zachary Elkind, fails to deliver a solid rendering.

Exiles runs through March 15 at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres. 502 West 53rd Street. 1 hour 30 minutes. No intermission. Photograph by George Vail.