Exit it the King (or) Just Die Already!

So it had been over a month since I last saw a play (and before that even longer) and I decided my next victim -- I mean subject of a review should be Third Wall Theatre's production of Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King.

Keep in mind I knew nothing of the play prior to seeing it.  I know a little about Ionesco and I think Absurdist Theatre is my favorite genre of theatre (next to Theatre of the Revolt to be sure).  Third Wall Theatre is also something I know a little about.  James Richardson's direction another.  So I had high expectations and no expectations for what I was about to see.  I think this turned out to be a good thing.

One thing that stood out for me while waiting for the curtain to rise is I like Third Wall's approach to set direction and design: both are subservient to the story being told on stage through the actors with the generous assistance of the light and sound men, the wardrobe and hair mistresses (all competently and deftly managed by the superhero Stage Manager).

Picture it: Floured patterned drapes hanging from the ceiling (what is it with hanging drapes from the ceiling of theatres in this city?  I am sensing a trend...)  The stage was condensed and rangaled so the playing area was a tight half circle.  Centre were three different sized rocking chairs, the obscenely large one in the centre flanked by two smaller ones...simple and easily understood--no, Goldilocks was not in this production.  The chairs used to symbolize the various thrones of the King and his two Queens (which was more weird than absurd--but I'll get to that).

(I should also mention before I go too much farther...Artistic Director James Richardson did the sound for this production and he also directed it.)

First character up to bat: The Knight

The Knight enters and begins rhyming off a whole bunch of stuff.  He's dressed head to toe in absurd looking armour.  Good visual, good physical performing--didn't need to see his face to know his intent (although he does take his "visor" off near the end of the play and the visual gag of it being a young man with a smurf voice did get the desired laugh--although not a strong one).  Voice was a little inconsistent going in and out of the "mid atlantic dialect"...weird because Ionesco wasn't English...the Knight also had a bit of the twitching hand thing going on for about the first three or four lines but that soon ended...I enjoyed his up and down shrugging and bending physicality as it helped focus the audience's mind to the idea of absurd theatre--it's hard if you're not used to it but it's exhilarating when you know what you're looking at.  What was a little disheartening was when all the other characters entered on stage.  It was like a tornado went through the set.  Which I kinda think goes with the play--but it was messy so I really couldn't tell exactly what was going on--that one of the problems with Absurdist Plays--what is absurd and what is "accidental"...not that there's anything wrong with that!

I don't know if it was me but I got the impression that if bubbles were able to form over the heads of the actors it would have the same sentence written inside them (with the exception of the King):
"What the heck is going on?"

1. Each character seemed to have their own concept of the play's reality...but there didn't seem to be a whole lot of agreement on the play's reality outside of the individual actor....until the end--but I'll get to that.

2. I chose to attend a Sunday matinee.  I did this because I do not think that just because it's a matinee it should be treated with any less focus by the actor's as an opening night performance.  For me the energy was too low and the actors weren't having enough fun. -- this I find weird as this kind of show encourages and champions actors having fun so I would have thought it would be easy.

Ten years ago I remember that Third Wall had a very young and "upstart" spirit.  It was so inspiring to me to be apart of that company and I have some very fond memories of my experiences.  But at some point Third Wall theatre seems to have grown up and lost that risk taking -- cavalier attitude (and I know that funding for the Arts has been reduced to a drip and classical theatre is a hard sell) -- but this show lacked spunk...it lacked the edginess of that golden age.  That's not to say this show wasn't good.  But it is to say that this show could have been GREAT.

This play is a comedy.  So why did the audience (full of older, wiser and well seasoned people) have trouble laughing out loud?  Because to me this show was played safe...

I know James Richardson can direct comedies.  The Importance of Being Earnest was so popular it was brought back for a second run.  But that was ten years ago.  And ten years is a long time.

Back to the story.

There are two Queens and a King.  One Queen was dressed like Snow White's crazy Step Mother, the other dressed like Sleeping Beauty...I do not know if this was intentional but I had trouble understanding that Sleeping Beauty Queen (the young actress who played Ophelia last month) was supposed to be a Queen and that she was married to the King (the actor who played Claudius/Ghost)--much older and more decrepid looking as he was 400 years old.  I actually thought (because I didn't read the program) that she was the Princess and he was her father -- then I thought she was the mistress and then I got really creeped out -- then I realized she was the other Queen and I laughed thinking it would have been less creepy and more funny if I had actually gotten the sense from the Sleeping Beauty Queen and the King that they were married, shared a bed, knew things about each other and had some hint of love between them--after all, Sleeping Beauty Queen has makeup that makes her look like she is constantly crying--because she's unhappy with the state of the world, with the health of the king, with her own mortality...I don't know...

Snow White's Step Mother (aka the other Queen) was loud and annoying.  I kinda wanted her to be the one the died at the end -- so this was somewhat a good choice for the character (the "battle axe" type of wife you love to hate)...but I found it to be a trap for the actress as her lines came out loud and resentfully flat and the lines had a tendency to sound the same and run together.

The Servant girl was funny.  But I can tell this actress has the potential to make an audience wet their pants with laughter.  This role has the ability to do the same thing -- but it didn't.  Her bowing at the beginning to the big empty chair was too sloppy and quick -- like bowing at an altar when I was a kid -- clarity of intent was not seen.

1. Just because it's absurd does not make it devoid of meaning.  There's a reason these characters do and act and say the things they do, act and say.

Sleeping Beauty Queen blows her nose and as you would expect she does it in a very "funny" way...but either the timing was off or it wasn't the right nose noise, it didn't produce the desired affect...it ended up reading like a limp joke...

At one point the Snow White Step Mother Queen repeats the line: "That's an order" -- she says it at least three times...why were they said the same way each time?  I couldn't help but notice this Queen's use of her hands.  It was like watching Edith Piaf sing -- which was kinda nice but became cumbersome at certain points because her hands never stopped moving.

Suddenly a Doctor enters.  It was as though this "doctor" was walking into his kitchen to make himself breakfast instead of meeting up with two Queens to watch the death of a long drawn out King.  Had he not walked into the light, I never would have noticed he was there--low energy.

I liked the lead up to the King's entrance (loud familiar carnival music--I laughed hysterically in my head at the absurdity of it) and then the King entered like a drunk and I was like: "one of these things is not like the other..."  Absurd?  Yes, that could be argued.  Dischordant, that could be argued too.

The impression I got around this point in the show was: this production was put on by either a church pageant group or the children's television workshop--which is kinda good for absurdist theatre I think...but I wasn't engaged in the production (and neither was the audience judging by the shifting and dozing going on) like a child would be watching something acted out on the Polka Dot Door or something.

The Snow White Step Mother Queen tells the King: "You're going to die."  Each time she says this (and again it's at least two or three times) it's the same way each time.  I'm not saying the lines need to go up in pitch or in volume but I am saying the tactics need to be varied and each time needs to be a stronger tactic--but that's my theatre background coming through and not everyone cares about that stuff.

Around now the King has the first of a number of "fits" in which loud Mozart music plays while the King wanders around in a kind of mad dance to show the degeneration of his illness (it's a guess really).  Okay, I kinda got this but it seemed messy.  I know that movement can be chaotic but I also know that even chaotic movement has to have clarity and purpose.

One thing I noticed about all actors (maybe not so much the Knight) was everyone had a hard time bringing the audience on stage.  In what I know of Ionesco's work, it's rich in audience/actor play.  The audience is always talked to by someone on stage as though they were part of the story--like in this one, the audience is like another character (the Servant girl addresses the audience in little one line jabs and smart ass comments and commentary thus making us feel like her friend and that makes what she says and what we observe to be even funnier because it becomes an inside joke).  Had the actors not been so shy or resistant to the idea of letting the audience in on their world I may have gotten my sense of "fun" back again.

At some point the King says the line "I want arms around me" -- I am pretty sure he's in the throws of his resistance to his impending death...but after he says this line he starts to run his hands around over the front of his body...I do not know what this had to do with the overall show but it jarred my understanding of what was going because I was watching it and thinking "ew...WTF...I did not see this coming...cough..."

Then there was another musical interlude and again I found it too be messy and confusing--sometimes with movement, less is more...I dunno though...I'm not a movement expert and this could have just been my perception of things...

Then there's another moment when the King is sitting in a wheelchair where he gets sexual and gross...again I don't know why...this is followed by the King having the Servant girl on his lap and they talk about Stew.  This part I had no problem with as I could see a glimpse of the potential comedy -- the King has the line: "never knew how beautiful carrots were" -- and the Servant girl has bright red hair...this could have had the audience howling in the aisles (not just because of the hair colour comparison)...but sadly there was no lead up, there was no pause or need for timing, there was no recognition that this was infact understood to be a joke, and the audience wasn't primed in time for the joke to work.

At this point Snow White's Step Mother Queen is pissed.  She wants the King dead...

1. She may want him dead but does every line have to sound the same?  Where's the love?  What's the objective of that character?  What other tactics could she play to get him to accept his death?

2. James is a master at blocking.  I had few issues on the blocking (except why the Sleeping Beauty Queen ends up spending the last half of the show sitting on the stage floor).

Sleeping Beauty Queen at this point begins to have lines that express her love for her husband the King and her struggle to accept his impending death--she wants him to live as badly as he does.  But I only know that because that's what the lines say.  One of the lines: "He's still breathing because I'm here." depending on how the character is played this line could be hysterically funny (if the character were played like Georgette on the Mary Tyler Moore Show) or it could be touching or it could be sincere...I did not get any thought behind it.

The King refers to the Snow White Step Mother Queen as: "You hateful, hideous woman. "  This tells me the actress did her homework and formulated her character based on what she discerned from the text -- however, not every husband who refers to his wife like this actually means it -- even if it is said as if he does...this is another line of potential comedy but the level of that comedy is determined by the type of character developed by the actor and the actor/director's ability to see and navigate the comedy.

This "chat" that the queen has with the King at this point I have dubbed the: "Don't be afraid" speech.  Throughout the Queen's chat with the King in which she helps him "knit up the raveled sleeve of care" and take off his burdens, she has some lines clearly meant to be said to the audience.  Then why was her focus solely on the King?  Did she not like us?

I found it hard to listen to because it seemed so long and drawn out and the images and words that were being said were very important and vivid but were not said with any more importance or energy than a tired cashier. There was no sense of the Queen helping the King (her husband) or that she was bringing him and us (the audience) to the end -- our final exit.

The Snow White Step Mother Queen had the line: "Now you've lost the power of speech..."  This is a great monologue that this Queen has.  But the lines ran together and the audience tuned out because there was no clear processing of ideas and images.  There was no " landmarks of crescendos" in the thoughts.  There was also no incentive to listen to the Queen as she helps her husband to his final moments or to let ourselves be taken along for the ride.

1. The director could have worked with his actors more to cultivate both the clarity of the play's reality (so there was some agreement) and helped to give the characters more depth (and also assistance in playing with and for the audience).

The very last image of the play (I will not spoil it for you) was worth the price of admission.

I am not kidding.  Which is why I am a little disappointed -- if the show had just a little more fire under it's ass, along with this last image, I would dare say this production would give anything currently running on Broadway or East End London a run for it's money.  However, that impression may not be shared by anyone else...I found it powerful and effective and 10 times more interesting, engaging, and impressive than the overall production.  Well done Lighting person!

Some parting shots---I mean thoughts.

1. The pool of "professional" actors appears to be quite small -- or the companies very incestuous in Ottawa these days...it used to be a bigger pool with less incest...this could be a sign 'o the times and I'm not sure it's a good thing.

2. Acting is an art form...like any art practice makes perfect...please someone offer more voice/movement/technique classes and please fellow actors -- take these classes and continue to hon your craft!

3. Classical Theatre must be revived.  I know that over 75% of the audience this day were over the age of 50 but I prophesy a good way to get the younger generations interested and supportive of theatre is to get them exposed to good productions of plays like those of the Absurdist genre.  I know it's not for everyone but done right, I challenge even the most staunch adversaries of absurdity to not have "a good night out".