Theater Review—

‘Exit The King’ Another Fine Show In New Milford

By Julie Stern

NEW MILFORD — As explained in the notes for Exit The King, the current offering at TheatreWorks New Milford, the term “Theatre of the Absurd” refers to a group of plays from the late 1940s-60s by playwrights such as Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee. The idea of the Absurd, as formulated by writers from Kierkegaard to Camus, is that human beings really want to see some meaning in the terrible things that happen, but they aren’t going to find it, because there really is no meaning in the Universe. Stuff just happens, and unfortunately for some, it happens to them.

Tom Stoppard’s Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead is about two minor characters in Hamlet who learn that Shakespeare’s script ordains that they are going to die, and that they are not important, and that no one will remember them, and there is no way they can escape.

Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is about two tramps who are waiting for the promised appearance of a God-like figure, but He never comes.

Likewise, Ionesco’s most successful play, Exit the King, which premiered in 1962 and won a Tony for Geoffrey Rush in the 2009 Broadway revival, deals with the emotional impact of the knowledge of impending death, done in comic fashion, because after all, if you have no control over the events of life, what else is there to do but laugh?

TheatreWorks New Milford has assembled an all star cast representing the absolute cream of local talent: Newtown’s Mark Feltch as the King, Jude Callirgros Robinson and Susan Abrams as his wives, and Kyle Minor, Paula Anderson, John Fabiani, John Bolster and Ken Greiter, all under the masterful direction of Jane Farnol, who has long demonstrated that she can do just about anything, to take some dramatic and intellectual risks  by staging this play.

How you feel about it will depend upon your appreciation for, or tolerance of, absurdist theater, because the comic wit and facility you see here in New Milford has to be as good as anything you might pay a lot more to see in New York.

The premise is that King Berenger’s kingdom is crumbling around him. His armies have been defeated, environmental disasters have laid waste to the crops, the people are starving and angry, and the king, his two queens, and his very small royal entourage are reduced to the confines of the palace and the garden wall. Even worse is the fact — which he doesn’t know at first — that he is going to die at the end of the play.

Should he be told? His sternly implacable first wife, Queen Marguerite (Jude Callirgros Robinson), insists that it is necessary. His softer and more tender trophy second wife, Queen Marie, doesn’t have the heart to hurt his feelings so.

Juliette (Paula Anderson), the maid and general factotum now that poverty has reduced the royal household to one servant, scrambles about trying to collect the dust, while she looks from one wife to another, like someone at a tennis match.

Kyle Minor, as the doctor, keeps checking vital signs and delivering bad news in a calm tone, while John Fabiani in a turn as a Shakespearean comic guard, keeps announcing the comings and goings of each royal presence as they enter and exit the garden.

Central to all of this is Mark Feltch as King Berenger. Clad in a crown and maroon pajamas, he cavorts about like Rocky, expressing his boyish hope and enthusiasm, only to be staggered by bouts of agonizing pain, which he doesn’t want to acknowledge. When Marguerite tries to tell him that he is going to die, he deflects her with a laugh. Of course he knows that,  everyone is going to die, but he won’t die for another forty years. After all, he is the King, he has absolute power.

The dramatic course of the play is for Berenger to confront the reality of his powerlessness, and to deal with it as a human being must. One of the most moving scenes in the show is when, the truth having finally dawned on him, he sees Juliette the maid in a whole new light. Previously she was just someone to scold because there were spiders in his room. Now he realizes for the first time that she has suffered in her life. Her husband has died; her knees hurt; she is tired.

You never noticed that before, Marguerite says, sarcastically. Feltsch, who is able to mix acrobatics and comic goofiness (as he did in his wonderful turn as a thug in Kiss Me Kate) is suddenly able to project human anguish and empathy as the truth of his predicament dawns upon him.

Is there room in the second decade of the 21st Century for this kind of message? Is our civilization heading for the same kind of cataclysmic destruction that devastated Europe in the Thirties and Forties? Does the combination of environmental degradation, economic upheaval, and political entropy that threaten us today mean that this play can be taken as a warning of the ultimate cost of frivolous and self-serving leadership? Or that life is cosmically unfair, and leadership isn’t going to fix anything? Or, is it merely meant to take our minds off the news, via a lot of comic talent, engaging in commedia dell arte style burlesque and shenanigans?

The staging and costuming were finely done, and I particularly enjoyed Tom Libonate’s sound design.

The one complaint I had — as is often the case on opening night — is the self-consciously loud and rather forced laughter coming from the friends of the cast in the audience, at almost every line. It’s a little too much like being trapped in the laugh track of a third rate sitcom, which this definitely is not.

(Performances continue weekends until October 9. See the Enjoy Calendar page or call 860-350-6863 for curtain and other details.

Note: Strobe lights are used in this production.)