Oh no, another royal mess at the National
Exit The King (Royal National Theatre) Verdict: Royal nonsense
SOME theatre directors have a knack for creating hits. Rufus Norris, boss of the Royal National Theatre, has the opposite. He is a one-man conveyor belt of stinkers, from the recent grotty Macbeth to stalls- emptyers such as Common, Salome and St George And The Dragon.
He has come up with a few watchable plays at his two smaller auditoria, but what’s been presented at the main house, the Olivier, has been dire. This is the most important space in British subsidised theatre and it has been running alarmingly below capacity, seats flapping back as audiences have fled.
Now comes another humdinger from Rufus’s Flop Factory: a bone-grinding eye-acher of Sixties European absurdism by Franco- Romanian thigh-slapper Eugene Ionesco.
Ionesco wrote Exit The King when he was convinced he was dying around the age of 50. In fact, he lived for another 30 years. One of life’s hypochondriacs, perhaps.
An ancient king, on the throne of his tiny kingdom for centuries, reaches the day for his death. He reacts petulantly when told of his impending demise. Finally, he is persuaded to walk the lonely, crimson-lit path to lifelessness.
That ending, well lit and with the Olivier’s stage gubbins creating an impressive cavern, is the best part of Patrick Marber’s production. It is the one moment the show achieves a dose of humanity. The rest of it is embarrassingly, thuddingly silly.
The royal court is like something from a nursery rhyme, a royal guard (Derek Griffiths) done up like a clockwork soldier, the king’s doctor (Adrian Scarborough) wearing a dunce’s cap. His nurse/charwoman (Debra Gillett) is a joke menial.
The King has two queens: the older one sardonic ( Indira Varma), the younger a fading coquette (Amy Morgan).
At the arrival of the king (Rhys Ifans) after about five minutes, the audience is told to stand. The crowd at Tuesday’s preview did so patchily and with reluctance. Scepticism had already set in.
We are told that the kingdom has shrunk to a mere five square miles and that it is a ruin.
The doctor looks through an absurdist telescope and announces that two planets have collided. The Sun is losing its power! The clouds are going to rain toads!
Had either of these events been boldly staged, it could have been quite interesting.
BuTnothing happens. We simply await the king’s death and keep being told how many minutes away it is — ‘Sixty-eight minutes. You’re going to die at the end of the play.’
Friends, 68 minutes have seldom passed so slowly. It really did feel like a lifetime.
There is a repeated gag about how the charwoman calls the throne room ‘the lounge’. We also have a routine about the king’s stools. The king suddenly mentions ‘Sidney the kidney’ (his name for one of his essential organs). The king dies.
Then (drat!) he is found to be still alive. He is given a bobble hat and a wheelchair.
Absurdism may just about work when there is enough sense of danger from outer chaos and when there is a core idea of an enemy or a threat of evil. None exists here. In a tiresome, puerile way, the play just charts the departure of a ruler who was not even powerful at first sight.
It lasts 100 minutes. They do it without a break. Wise. If you gave punters an interval, it would be Exit The Audience.