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 with his best friend (T. P. McKenna). They laughed, as if the scene which...