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by Eugène Ionesco, translated by Neil Armfield & Geoffrey Rush, directed by Albert Schultz

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

August 16-September 9, 2011

Soulpepper’s current production of Exit the King is quite peculiar--the first act never comes together but the second act works beautifully.  Why is there such a disparity?

First of all, Eugène Ionesco wrote the 1962 play (called Le Roi se meurt in the original French) in two contrasting styles.  In Act 1, King Berenger the First, who has reigned for over 200 years, is told he has only until the end of the play to live.  As in Shakespeare, the state of the kingdom mirrors that of the king and as he has gone into decline so has his kingdom been beset by innumerable calamities.  Berenger’s increasingly ludicrous protestations against the news of his immanent demise and the comically bizarre descriptions of his country’s devastation are written in Ionesco’s absurdist style familiar from such plays as The Chairs (1952).  Act 2, however, when Berenger comes to accept his fate, is written in a serious, highly poetic style as death is depicted as a release from the pain and madness that is life.

A director confronted with such a play has to be equally successful in conveying both styles in order to emphasize the contrast between them that Ionesco has deliberately created.  Director Albert Schultz is clearly more attuned to the poetic style of the Act 2 than he is to the absurdist style of Act 1.  Oliver Dennis, who plays Berenger, showed what a great physical and verbal comedian he is just earlier this year as the Old Actor in The Fantasticks.  Yet, though the role of Berenger has far more physical humour than that of the Old Actor, Schultz is far less inventive than directed Joseph Ziegler was.  For a play that sees Berenger constantly falling down and trying to get up and other characters paralyzed then unparalyzed in their movements, Schultz is content with simply repetition when a sense of whimsy is needed. 

The speech delivery in Act 1 also should be ramped up to a more hyperbolic level.  William Webster is altogether too dour as the Doctor even though he has to describe such disasters as the collision of Mars and Saturn.  Karen Rae as Berenger’s emotional second wife Queen Marie seems not to know how to bring out the humour in her character.  Derek Boyes makes for a very jolly Guard, but he is directed to be far too emotionally invested in the action rather than serving as a comic reporter on it. 

Anyone who has seen her before will know that Trish Lindström is can be very funny.  But here in the plum role as Juliette, the King’s only servant and nurse, her timing, like everyone else’s, is off and, like Boyes, she has not been given clear enough direction about how emotionally engaged or not her character should be.  For someone who says in Act 2 how much she dislikes her job, none of this is evident, as it should be, in Act 1. 

This leaves Brenda Robins as Berenger’s first wife, Queen Marguerite, to guide us through the action as the voice of reason.  In Act 2 her real love for Berenger shows through as she leads him step by step to give up all earthly things, including the concept of self, and leads him soothingly into death.  In this act, too, Dennis’s well-known mastery shines as the once-ridiculous figure he was in Act 1 takes on humility and confronts and embraces a force more powerful than that of any human being.  Act 1 cries out for a Monty Pythonesque sense of risible pomposity but is only awkward and boring.  In Act 2, however, Schultz does rise to the challenge of Ionesco’s text and brings out a poetry of worldly and personal renunciation not far removed from that in the Upanishads.

Ionesco conceives of Berenger, a favourite character of his who appears in two previous plays, as an innocent horrified by the realities of the world.  The play is very much his own version of the medieval Everyman, who also makes a fool of himself when confronted by Death.  But Ionesco has also added to this the theatrum mundi trope so famously expounded by Macbeth who sees that man is nothing but “a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more”.  For that reason Berenger is told he has only until the end of the play to live.

To emphasize the notion of life as a play, designer Lorenzo Savoini has created outlandishly off-kilter set that deliberately looks like a set and does not fill the entire stage.  As Berenger dies its artifice becomes even more apparent.  Along the front of the proscenium he has placed a row of old-fashioned footlights.  Schultz does have characters occasionally address and gesture to the audience, but in general he relies too much on the set itself rather than his direction to bring out the metatheatrical nature of the text.  Savoini’s costumes are all suitably faux-medieval except for the humorous French maid’s costume he gives Juliette and the modern satin gown he gives Queen Marie that simply seems out of place.  Steven Hawkins’ lighting is delightful, often more in tune with the nature of the text than Schultz’s direction.  In Act 1 he casts a sickly yellow-green over the cast’s faces when they learn of the country’s disasters and he beautifully controls the gradual, symbolic fading out of the light in Act 2. 

Schultz uses the translation of director Neil Armfield and actor Geoffrey Rush, who won a Tony Award for his Berenger in 2009.  That production was noted for the hilarious slapstick of its Act 1, something Schultz has ignored.  Yet, even if Schultz’s first act doesn’t work, don’t give up on the production.  His beautifully sensitive Act 2 is almost worth seeing on its own.                           

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Oliver Dennis as King Berenger the First. ©2011 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.