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Exit The King

by Eugene Ionesco
review by Michael Scott Moore in SF Weekly July 8, 1998

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Exit Rex

Exit the King. By Eugene Ionesco. Directed by Ugo
Baldassari. Starring C. Paul Canaday, Gene Thompson,
Kathryn Wood, Carrie Chantler, Mollie Peters, and John
Girot. At the Exit Theater, 156 Eddy (at Mason), through
July 28, 1998. Call 673-3847.

Exit the King presents Ionesco’s favorite hero, Berenger, as
the fumbling king of a deteriorating country. It’s one of his most
optimistic plays. As the finale of the Exit’s Absurdist Season, it
has not just an apt name but also a vividly absurd set -- the
huge colorful throne could be an upholstered lifeguard tower,
flanked by mushroom-stools out of Alice in Wonderland. The
royal guard wears bicycle-safety gear, a red codpiece, and a
breastplate mounted with a barbecue grill. Juliet the
chambermaid clanks around the stage with towels and kitchen
utensils tied around her waist, and the king wears duck
slippers, a plastic cape, and fools’ motley on his legs. All this
threatens good things for the play, but the colors blare with
false promise. They show the king’s country as a candied place
where people in ridiculous disguises connive and flatter and lie;
and any hopes for the show, at least at first, are just as false.

Berenger seems to think his nation and power are intact, but his
courtiers tell him otherwise. The doctor and his first wife,
Queen Marguerite, seem to be staging a takeover. His second
wife, Queen Marie, is on Berenger’s side. She’s the voice of
optimism, wearing pink tights and a wedding cake on her head.
When the doctor says something negative, she urges Berenger
to “Sweep him off his feet in a whirlwind of willpower!” But of
course it’s the royal willpower that’s failing. Most of this first
act feels listless: The players, except for C. Paul Canaday as
the guard, speak with an uninhabited stiltedness that doesn’t
quite scare up comic effect. Dropping the stiltedness and just
speaking clearly, as John Girot does now and then as the
doctor, works just fine; but during the first act there’s still a
sense that the cast hasn’t felt its way into Ionesco’s comedy.

By Act 2, the king has gone completely potty and slumps under
a blanket in a wheelchair. Everyone lists the accomplishments
of his 400-year reign while they wait for him to die. Then,
unexpectedly, his heart speeds up; he stands and gives a
strange speech -- “There’s a mirror in my entrails where
everything’s reflected” -- and goes blind. This is where both
the production and the king improve. Most of Berenger’s court
exits, and the king is left, fading and blind, at the mercy of his
former wife. Queen Marguerite looks like the evil queen from
Snow White, only with bubble pack on her collar. Gene
Thompson plays the bent and helpless king with real humility,
eyes rolled to the ceiling, and Kathryn Wood’s cold voice as
the queen is spellbinding. The last lines of Exit the King have
an astonishing optimism that this production teases out nicely,
as the queen coaxes Berenger out of his narcissistic dream.

-- Michael Scott Moore
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