Exiles, James Joyce - Benedict Nightingale (review date 1971)

Benedict Nightingale (review date 1971)

SOURCE: Nightingale, Benedict. “Frontiers.” New Statesman 82 (October 15, 1971): 518.

[In the following review, Nightingale responds unfavorably to Harold Pinter's production of Exiles at the Mermaid Theater.]

Last autumn, I was part of the critical consensus that almost unreservedly applauded the revival of James Joyce's Exiles at the Mermaid; this, I'm not so sure. Harold Pinter's production hasn't been improved by partial recasting and removal to the Aldwych. The introspective tone has become somewhat mechanical; the silences, too studied and self-conscious. Where it was meditative and even profound, it now often seems merely downbeat. On the second night, a man near me fell asleep and gently snored, and the audience as a whole reacted in a detached, relaxed manner when Richard Rowan (John Wood) extracted from his wife (Vivien Merchant) the physical details of her embryo affair...

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