The MAP Theater to Present Revival of EXILES by James Joyce in February

The MAP Theater will present a rare revival of Exiles by James Joyce (1882-1941), one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Adapted and directed by Zachary Elkind, former Associate Artistic Director of Bedlam, Exiles is Joyce’s only play and was last staged professionally in New York in 1977. This strictly limited engagement will run February 26 – March 15, 2025, with an opening set for Sunday, March 2 at The Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T /New York Theatres.

Joyce’s only play, rarely performed, arrives in New York — a sexy and tense romp in which a group of friends and couples tries to work out how to ethically have affairs with each other. Is it possible to have an affair with your own husband? Can you have love without possession?

“Exiles is asking the same questions we’ve been trying to work out recently in culture,” says director Zachary Elkind. “Joyce’s characters are trying to invent the idea of an open marriage in 1912 Ireland. It’s a thrilling and bracing reminder that we’ve always been fumbling in the dark. It’s an almost unbearably intimate play, written by one of the great writers as a dispatch from the front lines of one of the great weird marriages. One character in the play says, ‘It is a terribly hard thing to do — to give oneself freely and wholly — and be happy.’ That’s as true now as ever, and I think we as an audience are hungry for the voyeuristic thrill of watching these people try to figure out a way through love, sex, marriage, fidelity, honesty, happiness, as best they can.”

The cast for Exiles includes Rodd Cyrus (Ragtime/NYCC Encores!), Layla Khoshnoudi (Will You Come With Me?/Play Company, 7 Minutes/Waterwell); Jeffrey Omura (Public Theater, Ma-Yi), Violeta Picayo (Siti Company, Bedlam), and Mattie Tindall.

Written in 1914-1915, and first published in 1918, Exiles is considered to be Joyce’s least successful work. He wrote the play while finishing his first novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and beginning work on Ulysses. The play was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production by Ireland’s Abbey Theatre and for years, Joyce tried to interest theatrical companies in England, Ireland, and America. There were no takers until August 1919, when Exiles was staged in a German translation in Munich. Joyce summed up the world premiere: “Complete fiasco. Row in theatre. Play withdrawn. Author invited but not present… Thank God.”

Exiles was finally performed in English in 1925, at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse, currently known as the Playhouse Theater at Abrons Arts Center.

Decades later, the play found new appreciation as subsequent revivals, though limited and polarizing, were embraced by audiences and met with critical acclaim.

The 1957 Off-Broadway revival of Exiles at the Renata Theatre won four Obie awards, including Best All-Around Production. Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times declared, “Despite his lack of capacity for theatrical writing, Exiles is an engrossing drama. Awkward, wordy, colorless, inconclusive, and also consistently engrossing.”

In 1970, a few years prior to writing Betrayal, Harold Pinter directed a widely praised revival of Exiles in London. Irving Wardle in The New York Times noted, “There is no greater excitement in the theater than the discovery of life in a play long given up as dead. Such is the case with the Mermaid Theater revival of James Joyce's solitary play, Exiles, which has had a dismal performance record ever since its first Munich reviewer in 1919 dismissed it as ‘so many tears over an Irish stew.’ The new production of Exiles is the outstanding work in the London season so far this year. The play can be seen as a blackened canvas restored to its true colors.” 

The last professional revival in New York was produced by Circle Repertory Company in 1977. Mel Gussow in The New York Times called it a “tantalizing, unjustly neglected play. There is a beguiling air of mystery and domestic menace as these people seduce and betray one another —intellectually as well as emotionally.” 

The creative team for Exiles includes Cate McCrea (scenic design), Alyssa Korol (costume design), Amara McNeil (lighting design), Rebecca Hanai Malamud (production stage manager), and Spencer Lutvak (producer).

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