(L-R) Erika Soto, Lynn Robert Berg, Henri Lubatti and Joy DeMichelle (Photo – Craig Schwartz)
“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,” Shakespeare wrote, but in Eugène Ionesco’s play Exit the King, now at A Noise Within through May 31, palace intrigue troubles the crown-bearing head less than that unstoppable plotter, death itself.
By Garrett Rowlan
King Berenger enters the stage in a sloppy stride and does not want to be told he’s dying. Declaring himself healthy, he walks with obvious unsteadiness on his pins. (White makeup suggests skin paling with incipient demise.) His first of two wives, Marguerite, tells him to face facts, while his younger, weepy second wife, Maria, enables his illusion of health. His physician, consulting his watch, tells him he’ll die in an hour and a half, concurrent with the running time left in the play, another of the author’s absurdist tricks. His charwoman, Juliette, complains to the point of insubordination about the demands of her job, and the guard’s impressive physique and bellowing declarations cannot hide an almost paralytic inability to act, even when ordered.
The absurdist style of Exit the King, written when Ionesco was in his early forties and, I suspect, aware of his parents’ generation dying off, expresses through exaggeration the futility and mockery of old age, the mercurial way people age, and the unraveling of accomplishment. “In three days we’ve lost all the wars you won,” the King is told. His impending demise even takes on a terrestrial resonance, as clouds rain frogs and earthquakes rattle the stage. Even the cosmos seems to feel his decline, as Mars and Saturn have apparently collided.
If the universe is dying, the King will not accept it. Though he limps, falls, and staggers stiff-legged across the stage, he insists that “I’ll die when I want to.” His doctor, clearly competent but otherwise indifferent to his patient, tells him he is about to “abdicate physically.” The King’s two wives (ably played by Joy DeMichelle and Erika Soto) represent a paradox of the aging experience: the desire to recapture or retain vitality and the necessity of facing the facts of life. Ralph Cole Jr., KT Vogt, and Lynn Robert Berg are all excellent as the Doctor, Juliette, and the Guard.
The King, however, is the star of the show, and Henri Lubatti, as King Berenger, impressed me not only with his pratfalls and lurching, comic attempts to gainsay the depredations of time, but also with the way his body assumes a stillness in the play’s final minutes that suggests a loosening of physical bondage. And that old cliché about walking into the light came alive for me at the play’s end, thanks to some impressive smoke and lighting effects.
Exit the King reaches some of life’s most profound and vexing dilemmas by a circuitous route through the absurd to the paradox of human existence. “Why was I born if it wasn’t forever?” the King complains at one point.
The question remains unanswered, but Exit the King is a worthy step in its examination.
Exit the King Written by Eugène Ionesco Translated by Donald Watson Directed by Michael Michetti Cast: Lynn Robert Berg, Ralph Cole Jr., Joy DeMichelle, Henri Lubatti, Erika Soto, KT Vogt Through May 31 Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7: 30 pm. Saturdays and Sundays at 2:00 pm. Location 3352 E Foothill Blvd. Pasadena, CA 91107 Tickets start at $41.75 (including fees). Student tickets start at $20 anoisewithin.org
Joy DeMichelle and Henri Lubatti (Photo – Craig Schwartz)
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