culture
Soulpepper Steps Into Kingdom of the Absurd with Exit the King
Brenda Robins as Queen Marguerite and Oliver Dennis as King Berenger in Ionesco’s sovereign satire Exit the King. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.
Exit the King
Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street)
Selected dates until September 9
After two months of running between Fringe and SummerWorks shows, many of which were still under development and unfinished, we were looking forward to settling in again for a full-length, polished, full-on production with ample funds and 12 weeks’s worth of rehearsals. Soulpepper Theatre’s newest production, Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist tale of mortality and legacy Exit the King, as directed by Soulpepper’s founding artistic director Albert Schultz and starring Oliver Dennis as the titular king, was a perfect fit. Unfortunately, a play with time, resources, and talent can sometimes miss the mark.
Exit the King is the third play in Ionesco’s “Berenger Cycle,” a rarely produced work revived by a new translation by Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush. Set in the palace of a crumbling and shrinking kingdom, King Berenger’s unaffected doctor and callous first wife Queen Marguerite tell him he has about two more hours to live, while his second wife Queen Marie wails at his side and his maid Juliette fetches his slippers. Supposedly more than 400 years old, King Berenger is incredulous at the news at first, insisting he still maintains the ability to command the will of his citizens, the weather, and even his lifespan. As the play progresses and his body shuts down, however, he moves through the various stages of grieving—from anger, to bargaining, to depression, and ultimately, to acceptance. Though by that point he’s only able to drool and shuffle around anyway. Though not his most popular, Exit the King has been noted as Ionesco’s best work, departing from his usual stories that jump around in time and place and following a more straightforward and conventional(ish) plot line. With that, the play still falls within Soulpepper’s mandate to produce well-known theatrical classics.
This production has a solid foundation in the quality of the script and the talent of the actors at work. Ionesco creates a world that’s completely exaggerated, literally falling apart while its leaders watch helplessly. Yet, in the midst of international riots, revolution, and recessions, it resonates particularly strongly today. Dennis carries the show on his increasingly stooping shoulders and uses his physicality as his strong point in the first act as Berenger loses his ability to keep his balance or to hold on to his beloved scepter. But when he is confined to a wheelchair later, the action stagnates. As Berenger’s state of mind changes from indignation and pride to depression and melancholy, his subjects remain unmoved in their dispositions. The doctor is still cold, Marie is still sobbing, the guard still announces Berenger’s decay in loud monotone. As the kingdom directly reflects his failing health, the other characters are unaffected physically as well as in personality. Quietly stealing the show is Trish Lindström as Juliette, who aces her few lines with a killer deadpan.
Also mixed is Lorenzo Savoini’s set and costume design. While visually impressive (the set includes numerous astounding portraits of Dennis as King Berenger plastering the walls), the slanted throne room in dark maroon and dirty gold is too literal a representation of the deterioration of the kingdom. And besides a crack and a little sinking, the room looks like all it needs is a little dusting. Meanwhile the costumes of Berenger’s attendants do not reflect it at all—the citizens are dying, the sun cannot shine, and ministers are falling into giant pits of nothingness, while both queens and the doctor are immaculately dressed. So much of the humour and interest of the script lies in the breakdown of the city and its inhabitants, but that is only ever spoken of and never seen. Without clearly communicating that decay through the characters and set onstage, how are we to believe Marguerite and the doctor in their insistence that Berenger must hurry up and die already?
This version of Exit the King is perfectly acceptable for audiences wanting a taste of Ionesco and Theatre of the Absurd—Schultz, Dennis, Savoini, and the rest of the team certainly do know how to put on a show. But in terms of concept, we think the story of this king leaving his building would have been more effective if there had been no more building at all.