Exit the King
In 1962, when Eugene Ionesco wrote Exit the King, the western world was poised between old and new, fear and adventure, the Swinging 60s and the Cold War. John F Kennedy was president of the United States and star of a revived dream of Camelot. The first communications satellite - Telstar - was launched; West Side Story won the best picture Oscar and the Beatles were recording and re-recording Love Me Do, Please Please Me and PS I Love You.
At the same time, World War II was a vividly recent reality for millions, so such discombobulating events as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the creation of the miniskirt contributed to a sense of absurdity and alarm which - for the playwright - coalesced in what is now known as Theatre of the Absurd.
Watching, fascinated, from within the somnolent white picket fence world of Robert Menzies' Australia were two boys: Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush. Living in equal measures of security and boredom, their fertile minds were perfect repositories for the seeds of creativity to lie dormant until a new Age of Absurdity. The result is a peculiarly potent creative partnership in which the Clown and the Intellect (in both men) have combined to produce some of the most memorable theatre of the past 20 years, from Diary of a Madman onwards.
Absurdist theatre therefore - The Chairs and The Goat - are recent productions that spring to mind - is the obvious form at our moment in history. It is difficult to imagine much more absurd than this first decade of the 21st century, dominated as it is by The War on Turr, catastrophic climate change and Paris Hilton's various epiphanies.
As an actor whose spiritual home is the Belvoir St stage, Geoffrey Rush's inspired grasp on absurdity and reality, the cerebral and the physical, was made for the role of King. This is a man - or an idea - so puffed with hubris that he cannot believe death will disobey his orders, yet he can also say, with heart stopping sweetness, "One cannot live badly, it is a contradiction in terms."
Rush is joined in Exit the King by Julie Forsythe, another actor who shares his sensibility and extraordinary gifts for childlike innocence and bloodcurdling wickedness. An apparent absence of self-consciousness makes these two able to produce a combination of unique physical humour and a marvellous depth of character which is exhilarating to watch. As Juliette, the long-suffering maid and general factotum, Forsythe contributes immeasurably to the play and, in a long scene with Rush, the pair produces a sequence of sheer genius.
[page]The rest of the cast, however, particularly Bille Brown (The Doctor) and Gillian Jones and Rebecca Massey (Queens Marguerite and Marie), are not from the same planet, nor do they appear to be in the same play. They are doggedly earthbound and consequently have more in common with the palace furniture than Rush and Forsythe. Part of this dislocation has to do with the play (or, perhaps, the casting). Audience expectations of an actor of Brown's stature and comic and dramatic capabilities is that at some point he will get his turn at a bravura scene - the one that tells you why he's there and why he's special. It isn't there in this play and Brown is mostly peripheral to the action. Massey has a better time of it but that's because her role is bigger and she plays its comic aspects for all they're worth.
On opening night in Sydney at least, Gillian Jones seemed ill at ease and unsure of her place in the scheme of things. Normally one of the more formidable stage presences, she was muted and almost transparent. Perhaps the pre-show kerfuffle with smoke alarms, foyer evacuations and the arrival (twice) of the fire brigade was unsettling. Whatever the reason, hers was an uncharacteristically subdued and uncertain performance. She came into her own only in the closing moments when the Queen is a virtually disembodied voice in the darkness.
David Woods as The Guard is at one with his costume - a suit of armour - in a way that suggests he is well on his way to being comfortably at home in Absurdia; Phil Slater's trumpet commentary (away to the back of the theatre in a box) is also an integral part of the cast and the music, by John Rodgers, adds poignancy and wit.
Dale Ferguson's crumbling palace set and semi-Ruritanian costumes echo two other contemporary Absurdist principalities: Concordia, the setting for Peter Ustinov's 1961 movie Romanoff and Juliet and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick of The Mouse that Roared. The latter was filmed in 1959 with Peter Sellers in three crazily creative roles as Duchess Gloriana, the prime minister, Count Rupert Mountjoy and Tully Bascomb, a dazzlingly caparisoned field marshal. Just think who could take the roles today for a remake!
Nevertheless, in the end there is more yearning than yuks in Exit the King as he resists death and the blandishments of Queen Marguerite to - essentially - lie down and take it like a man. Along the way the parallels with our own ridiculous attitudes to the elderly and approaching death are highlighted in one tiny exchange between the King and his Doctor: the dying King wants a plate of stew. The Doctor says no, it will not be good for his health.
Safeguarding the well-being of the dying is, paradoxically, something our society is absolutely no good at. It's denied and made appalling through institutionalising and quarantining the experience to the point where the only possible response is fear. But, as one observer says of the King: "Death will kill him - not his fear."
Exit the King is a two-and-a-half hour virtuoso performance from Geoffrey Rush, which happens to be how long it takes for the King to finally cark after as many delaying tactics as he can muster. It is hard to imagine it working without his performance, however, because the play's essential absurdity has been superseded by a reality in which a man who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds, even thousands of people could respond blithely: "Stuff happens."
