Exit the King
by Eugène Ionesco, translated by Donald Watson
The Walnut Street Theatre, Independence Studio on 3
September 1 - 20, 2015
Directed by Tina Brock
Director
Tina Brock
Assistant Director
Noah Lee
Costume & Set Design
Erica Hoelscher
Lighting Design
Andrew Cowles
Sound Design
Tina Brock
Stage Manager/Light and Sound Operator/Prop Construction
Mark Williams
Technical Director
Scott Cassidy
Assistant Costumer
Jessica Barksdale
Scenic Painter
Kate Coots
Red Carpet Consultant
Charisse Nelson
Ways and Means Coordinator
Bob Schmidt
Photography
Johanna Austin / AustinArt.org
Produced by arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
Exit the King is made possible in part by generous grants from Wyncote Foundation; The Samuel S. Fels Fund; The Philadelphia Cultural Fund; Arts & Business Council of Greater Philadelphia; The Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts program of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency with support also provided by PECO and administered regionally by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance; The Charlotte Cushman Foundation; The William Penn Foundation and by YOU: over 60% of our annual budget comes from ticket sales and individual contributions.
Running time is approximately 90 minutes without an intermission.
Restrooms are located in the lobby, at the end of the hall.
*Member of Actor’s Equity Association
The Sound of a Dilapidated Kingdom
Thanks to these artists for their contribution to Exit the King:
Musak – Stimulus Progression
Muzak dominated the market for so many years that the term is often used as a generic term for all background music. The company began customizing the pace and style of the music provided throughout the workday in an effort to maintain productivity (a technique it called “Stimulus Progression”). The music was programmed in 15-minute blocks, gradually getting faster in tempo and louder and brassier in instrumentation, to encourage workers to speed up their pace. Following the completion of a 15-minute segment, the music would fall silent for 15 minutes. Company-funded research showed that alternating music with silence limited listener fatigue, and made the “stimulus” effect of Stimulus Progression more effective.
The Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime from Remain in Light (1981)
Written and Performed by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz,
Jerry Harrison and Tina Weymouth
Sergio Mendes & Brasil ’66 – Mas Que Nada
Written by Jorge Ben. Performed by Sérgio Mendes, Lani Hall, Bibi Vogel, Bob Matthews, Jose Soares and Joao Palma.
Tina Davidson – Fire on the Mountain, I Hear the Mermaids Singing and Lullaby from I Hear the Mermaids Singing (1996)
John Zorn – Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour (1989)
An album by John Zorn featuring music written for a series of Japanese animated shorts that were created by Kiriko Kubo. It features Zorn’s first music for cartoons and was originally released on the Japanese Sony label in limited numbers. In late 1996 Zorn finally attained the rights for his music and remastered and re-released the album on his own label, Tzadik. John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist with hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, and producer across a variety of genres including jazz, rock, hardcore, classical, surf, metal, klezmer, soundtrack, ambient and improvised music.
Bill Frisell – Good Dog, Happy Man (1999)
Kevin Francis – The Empire Builders (2011)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Eine kleine Nachtmusik (1787)
A composition for a chamber ensemble by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the German title means “a little serenade,” though it is often rendered more literally but less accurately as “a little night music”. The work is written for an ensemble of two violins, viola, and cello with optional double bass, but is often performed by string orchestras.
Reviews
Exit the King (2015)
“…surprisingly sad and beautiful... a silly and sublime experience...”
--Mark Cofta, Philadelphia City Paper
“…uproarious and profound…intensely thought-provoking, hilarious, and heart-wrenching.”
--Debra Miller, Phindie
“…illuminates all Ionesco has to say about death...Exit the King is labeled as absurdist, as all of Ionesco is. I think “absurdity” is too broad and ameliorating a term for Exit the King. It is a play of masterful clarity.”
--Neal Zoren, NealsPaper.com
“...everything about this production was so electric... an anxiety attack down a red carpet littered with cigarette butts..."
--Jessica Foley, Foley Gets Comped
Director's Notes
September, 2015
Welcome!
Martin Esslin, author of The Theatre of The Absurd writes: "To confront the limits of the human condition is a profound mystical experience. The Theatre of the Absurd is a reflection of what is genuinely representative of our own time… the certitudes and unshakable basic assumptions of former ages have been swept away, have been tested and found wanting...”
Exit the King was conceived during a period of childhood illness when Ionesco was consumed with fears of death, coupled with his obsession that one could avoid being sick and simply live forever. “I told myself that one could learn to die, and that I could learn to die, that one can also help other people to die. This seems to me to be the most important thing we can do, since we’re all of us dying men who refuse to die.”
Since June, the cast and crew of Exit have been wrestling with these questions, mining landscapes personally and textually, navigating the twists and turns of his language and ideas. We are once again humbled by the scope and the simplicity of his premise and excited to share the next part of our discovery with you.
Thank you for helping make this theater and this experience possible.
Tina Brock
Producing Artistic Director
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy
September 20, 2015
Phindie
When an Actor Cannot Move, the Director has to Jump In
Tina Brock is the new KING in the sold-out final performances of Ionesco’s classic
by Henrik Eger
“Performing Ionesco is a sport,” declared Tina Brock, artistic director of absurdist theater group Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, in a recent Phindie interview, unaware that she and her theater would get tested severely when Robb Hutter, the lead in IRC’s production of EXIT THE KING, hurt his back and ended up at hospital. Tina Brock had to make a quick decision: “So I’m on as the King—both last night and today. Not exactly the way I was hoping to take out this show, but here we are!”
Before the final show today, she shared the following: “The King’s back had been giving him stop and start fits throughout the run of the show, though [it] seemed to be under control. I received a text yesterday in the early afternoon that Robb was lying on the floor, unable to move, he was in such excruciating pain…. We were trying to solve the problem through texts as he waited for the ambulance to arrive. [He] was admitted to the hospital for testing and released later last night.”
She continues: “We talked about what to do, with a full house, closing weekend, many of our loyal audience waiting until the final weekend to see the show. After many considerations—since I knew the text, have played Ionesco before, [and] understood the material—it seemed the best course to have me wear the Little Lord Fauntleroy wig from Ondine (worn as the King) and give it a go. The script became the King’s scepter and off we went.
“The cast was able to move me around on stage where the King needed to be, since he’s losing his mind and faculties anyway. Funny how all the blocking goes away when you are suddenly in the play instead of on the other side of it, directing the action.
“It’s always a joy to perform Ionesco, regardless of the circumstances: to say his words, to exist in the world, is a gift. Since the King in Exit is losing all his capacities, so it all sort of seemed to work.”
She ended her note with “Hugs and wish me strength,” and added this PS: “running off after the show, while the crew loads the set out tonight, to fundraise for WHYY, beginning at 6:30 pm. Happy life.”
Speedy recovery, Robb Hutter, from all of us—and on with the show.
September 16, 2015
Phindie
Performing Ionesco is a Sport
Interview with EXIT THE KING director Tina Brock
by Henrik Eger
Philadelphia’s favorite absurdist theater troupe, Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, is Fringing all Festival long with Eugene Ionesco’s EXIT THE KING. Henrik Eger talks to director Tina Brock about this intriguing production.
Henrik Eger: What made you select EXIT THE KING with its fin de siècle atmosphere, its look at death, dying, and decay?
Tina Brock: There is the Seize the Day theme. Life goes by quickly, particularly in our rapidly moving modern world. To focus on the essential and weed out the distractions is an art. There is a meditative quality about the last third of this play—a meditation on life and the end of life, on the roles we take on to keep the structure in place, the roles that we need in order to feel secure.
I also saw the play as a comment about valuing the time we have, and living for each day. The sections about time passing so rapidly struck a chord.
Eger: You seem to have a personal connection to EXIT THE KING.
Brock:Exit the King intrigues from the theme of honoring our elders, for trails blazed, and the wisdom of experience. This journey is happening in my family presently, and it informed the process. It’s painfully difficult, though beautiful and important to experience all of those conflicting elements at one time.
It seems the greatest gift you can give someone is to simply be there, which is the hardest thing when there’s literally nothing you can do to change the outcome. The idea of sharing the same space when “the end is near” takes on a new meaning—though, really, we never know when our time will come.
Eger: The plays that you have presented during these past ten years always seem to have a wider social and, perhaps, even political relevance.
Brock: In turbulent times, examining what matters to us most seems key, so as not to get caught up in the frenzy. This play interested me as not only in the singular journey of one man and the people around him, but the effect on the whole Kingdom and how, when the leader of a system cannot lead, the effect on the whole is systemic. Who steps up to do the necessary but difficult work of shepherding the person to the next place? How does the system react within?
Eger: You chose a great team of actors. What did they bring to these roles?
Brock: Performing Ionesco is a sport, really. The form requires the precision of a skilled group of team players: it’s highly technical, requires sufficient pace, vocal and emotional clarity, and physical precision. It’s more akin to volleyball than theater—which can be quite disarming to performers when you invoke the sport analogy. It’s one that Ionesco himself frequently used to describe the thrill of watching live theater at its best, commenting that it was like an exciting sporting event.
Eger: Lighting added greatly to this production.
Brock: Andrew Cowles understood the magical, ever-shifting mood that is Ionesco, translating the metaphysical into light and shadow, making the light a character–which is exactly what Ionesco asked for, namely that the elements be equal to create an experience larger than the sum of the parts: lights, sound, performers, costumes, and set design.
Eger: The costumes cracked me up, all beautifully done for this surreal piece.
Brock: Erica Hoelscher’s knowledge of costume history is immense. She researches and uses that knowledge, combined with her artistic sensibility. Her ability to understand performers, who they are as people, before they become the characters, informs her design. Erica takes into consideration the person she is designing for, and always builds on their strengths and individualities. Once that basic design is in place, we decide then what elements can be amped up to express the specific eccentricities of the character.
It’s a tricky balance, designing for this form. Costumes can easily veer off into absurdity for the sake of silliness, with no connection to the character traits behind the choices. Erica understands how the historical informs the themes. We share the same work and artistic ethic and a desire to take risks, despite a small budget.
Eger: Tell us about the inspiration behind the magical sound work.
Brock: I’m affected by and sensitive to sound and music and how it ignites my mood and creativity. I begin work on the sound very early, and it is often the first element completed before the staging. This [approach] informs the direction for the characters and serves as a touch point for the play. When I run into blocks about direction, I come back to the soundscape.
Eger: The audience was laughing a lot—even in the face of a King Lear-like loss of power and life.
Brock: I want to be entertained at the theater. And there are many ways to accomplish that. One way is also to be challenged, goaded, and required to think about life and the choices we make. It’s important for me to experience the work of many different artists and ideas: dancers, visual artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers—and to be exposed to entertainment that makes me uncomfortable and challenged. I want to be exhausted after having seen a show.
Eger: And how does EXIT THE KINGaccomplish that?
Exit the King doesn’t lend itself to entertainment as in “you’re going to forget your troubles and escape to Nirvana,” but there is a comfort to me in tackling the subject head on. It’s a disturbing play, no doubt, but so is living in our modern world. Once it’s a given that life is finite, and that “we haven’t the time to take our time” (Queen Marguerite), then every move becomes important and considered.
For me, this is entertainment of the highest order: it asks the questions, poses the issues, and allows us to bring ourselves to the table—hopefully leaving changed in some way.
Eger: Ionesco’s world is filled with constant contradictions, puzzling paradoxes, and absurdities that show the ups and downs of life.
Brock: As King Berenger says in his conversation with his Maid Juliette about the beauty of life, “It’s beautiful to be bored, and to not be bored . . . .” That’s what the plays the IRC chooses ask of our audience.
Eger: Tell us about audiences that love surreal theater.
Brock: Our audiences are an interesting, curious, spectacularly risky group, comprised of all ages and disciplines. What you will get with this experience is the “Anticipatory Ionesco Excitement”—a feeling that “something special will happen, and we will create it together.” It’s theater where everyone is trying to make sense of the insanity, coming together to share 90 minutes of reverence—and that’s the key—sharing the 90 minutes. We are changed for having been there together. It’s fabulous.
Eger: How ready do you think Philadelphia is for surreal theater the way IRC presents it all year round?
Brock: Very ready.
Eger: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Brock: Eugene Ionesco said, “It’s not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
Eger: Thank you, Tina Brock. Ionesco also said, “Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” Your productions do precisely that.
[Walnut Street Theatre, Independence Studio on 3, 825 Walnut St., 3rd floor] September 1-20, 2015; fringearts.com/eugene-ionescos-exit-the-king.
July 20, 2015
Phindie
Deb Miller's 15 Top Picks for the 2015 Fringe Festival
by Debra Miller
Since 2013, Phindie has provided the best and most comprehensive coverage of the annual Philadelphia Fringe Festival, with previews of the hottest shows, interviews with leading creators, and reviews of almost every show on offer. (See the 2015 Fringe Festival section of the site for full coverage.) We kick off our coverage with Deb Miller’s annual Top Picks for the non-curated Fringe shows.
With just over 130 listings this year in the Neighborhood Fringe, the number of participating artists and companies has dropped over the past few seasons. But the tried-and-true mainstays, with their proven record of entertaining performances, give us many shows to look forward to in the 2015 Fringe Festival, as do some emerging young talents. The Top Picks for September (excluding the FringeArts Curated programming) include a range of offerings, from theater and dance to music and multi-disciplinary work, from new plays and original ensemble-devised pieces to revivals and reinterpretations of the classics. What they all have in common is that each invokes the power of art to take us to another time, place, or state of mind–to the fringes of our everyday reality. In alphabetical order by artist/company, they are:
#4. Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, EXIT THE KING – Theater of the Absurd numbers among the fringiest genres in the history of theater, and IRC numbers among its most expert practitioners. Following their sold-out FringeArts absurdities of the past two years (Kafka’s The Castle and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros), director Tina Brock and her ridiculously honed team bring another Ionesco classic to this year’s festival. As the 400-year-old megalomaniacal King Berenger preposterously refuses to acknowledge that “the party’s over” despite a crumbling kingdom, shrinking coffers, an aging populace, and his own imminent demise, the play’s meaningful gallows humor reminds us that the sun is waning on all of us and it’s absurd to deny it.
August 28, 2015
WHYY Newsworks:
SHAPIRO ON THEATER
It's Fringe Festival time — and here's the theater I want to see (among the 140-odd productions)
by Howard Shapiro
Last year, the city's Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium began its season at the Fringe with a buoyant rendition of Eugene Ionesco's classic, "Rhinoceros," and this year it's his equally absurdist play about the fool of a 400-year old ruler whose kingdom is increasingly in disarray. If the company is true to form, the production will bring out the fun of the play without sacrificing its deeper meaning.
September 3, 2015
Phindie
EXIT THE KING (IRC): Fringe Review 1
by Debra Miller
A stunning set and costume design (Erica Hoelscher) launch viewers into the preposterous world of EXIT THE KING, in the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s uproarious and profound Fringe production of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist classic. Referencing Piranesi’s 18th-century monochrome etchings of the decaying ruins of ancient Rome and the colorful youth-culture fashions of the Pop ‘60s, the contrast between them is a trenchant visualization of the disconnect between the reality of the dying monarch’s deteriorating state and his foolish state of denial in refusing to acknowledge the obvious: that he and his kingdom—and all of us–are falling apart and the future is not as bright as the youthful attire he and his courtiers don.
Under director Tina Brock’s signature style of theatrical ‘ridiculopathy,’ a spot-on cast brings acerbic humor, hysteria, and pathos to Ionesco’s ludicrous characters and morbid situation. The extraordinary Robb Hutter commands the stage in a flawless performance as the megalomaniacal, risible, and ultimately tragic Berenger, the 400-year-old King/Everyman, who goes through the universal stages of dying and at last comes to accept his inevitable mortality, as everyone around him vanishes (dramatic lighting by Andrew Cowles). Supported by Brock’s affecting sound design, Patricia Durante and Anna Lou Hearn as Berenger’s queens, Susan Giddings as his doctor, Jenna Kuerzi as the maid, and Bob Schmidt as the royal guard all hit the tragicomic mark with precision and deliver a powerful 90 minutes of intensely thought-provoking, hilarious, and heart-wrenching irrationality on life, death, and the human condition. [Walnut Street Theatre, Independence Studio on 3, 825 Walnut St., 3rd floor] September 1-20, 2015; fringearts.com/eugene-ionescos-exit-the-king.
A stunning set and costume design (Erica Hoelscher) launch viewers into the preposterous world of EXIT THE KING, in the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s uproarious and profound Fringe production of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist classic. Referencing Piranesi’s 18th-century monochrome etchings of the decaying ruins of ancient Rome and the colorful youth-culture fashions of the Pop ‘60s, the contrast between them is a trenchant visualization of the disconnect between the reality of the dying monarch’s deteriorating state and his foolish state of denial in refusing to acknowledge the obvious: that he and his kingdom—and all of us–are falling apart and the future is not as bright as the youthful attire he and his courtiers don.
Under director Tina Brock’s signature style of theatrical ‘ridiculopathy,’ a spot-on cast brings acerbic humor, hysteria, and pathos to Ionesco’s ludicrous characters and morbid situation. The extraordinary Robb Hutter commands the stage in a flawless performance as the megalomaniacal, risible, and ultimately tragic Berenger, the 400-year-old King/Everyman, who goes through the universal stages of dying and at last comes to accept his inevitable mortality, as everyone around him vanishes (dramatic lighting by Andrew Cowles). Supported by Brock’s affecting sound design, Patricia Durante and Anna Lou Hearn as Berenger’s queens, Susan Giddings as his doctor, Jenna Kuerzi as the maid, and Bob Schmidt as the royal guard all hit the tragicomic mark with precision and deliver a powerful 90 minutes of intensely thought-provoking, hilarious, and heart-wrenching irrationality on life, death, and the human condition.
September 3, 2015
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Fringe Review: EXIT THE KING
by Toby Zinman
The "exit" referred to in the title is The Big Exit, and this play, Exit the King by Ionesco is a ninety minute meditation on dying. The central metaphor is that the King's death is echoed by the crumbling of his kingdom, and given recent news of buildings falling into sinkholes, Alaska melting, uncontrolled wildfires, and general ecological mayhem, Exit the King seems to be what is called in sleazeland, "ripped from the headlines."
Berenger (Robb Hutter) is the 400-year-old king, but unlike Ionesco's earlier play about Berenger, Rhinoceros, where the controlling metaphor was political, this one is existential. The King's self-absorption, life as an endless selfie, is a fair measure of the impact of imminent death. Perhaps the most salient line is Queen Marguerite's: "Don't start hoping all over again." When the King weeps, she utters what may be a universal truth, "terror only makes him banal."
He is surrounded by his first queen, Marguerite (Patricia Durante with her commanding presence and graceful hands), his second queen Marie (Anna Lou Hearn with her shrill voice and adorable Barbie looks), his palace guard (Bob Schmidt), the maid (Jenna Kuerzi) and his physician (Susan Giddings who offers the only whiff of humor), none of whom can provide any real help.
Director Tina Brock's interesting program notes tell us that the play was "conceived during a period of childhood illness when Ionesco was consumed with fears of death." And despite Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's ten years of absurdist drama—a realm where Ionesco is king—this play feels like the product of an adolescent mind confronting human mortality for the first time. A little more humor in the production—admittedly tough in the tight playing space—would leaven the loaf.
The actors all do what they can, giving the repetitions and obviousness script. Every point is repeated and repeated, as if Ionesco were afraid we might not get it. The King says, "As long as we live, we turn everything into literature." And maybe that's why this dialogue sounds so unconvincing; this is not human speech but philosophical maunderings.
September 4, 2015
Philadelphia City Paper
Fringe Review: Exit the King
by Mark Cofta
BRIEF SELF-DESCRIPTION: King Berenger is the Hugh Hefner of a crumbling kingdom, though this party’s over and the end is here.
WE THINK: IRC, one of several local companies to use the FringeArts Festival as a springboard to success, celebrates its 10th year with a sly and spirited revival of Eugene Ionesco's seldom-seen (is there any other kind of Ionesco play?) Exit the King.
Tina Brock's assured production starts hilariously, with the characters strutting a red carpet like decadent celebrities in Erica Hoelscher's cartoonishly crumbling throne room. Robb Hutter is the titular king, presiding over a kingdom in disarray. (I felt reminded of the last days of the George W. Bush presidency, though the play was penned in 1968.) His two wives — pragmatic Queen Marguerite (Patricia Durante) and arm candy Marie (Anna Lou Hearn, in pink party dress with a sash reading "Queen") — along with royal doctor Susan Giddings and maid Jenna Kuerzi attend to him as he faces death. Bob Schmidt is hilarious as the king's loyal guard, prone to announcing every little event.
It's a loud, funny affair at first, punctuated by Brock's lively soundscape that ranges from Talking Heads to vivid crashes of the kingdom disintegrating like melting glaciers — "the Milky Way is curdling!" — but then, amidst the silliness, something extraordinary occurs: the king, who faces death "like a school boy who hasn't done his homework now sitting for an exam," confronts the inevitable for real.
Though Marguerite announces early on that he'll die "by the end of the show," Hutter and Durante make his final moments achingly sincere. What felt like broad farce turns spiritual and bittersweet, as the King faces what every person must, stripped of his hubris, with childlike innocence. It's surprisingly sad and beautiful, punctuated by Andrew Cowles' delicate lighting, and just perfect.
The label "absurdity" — which Ionesco rejected — doesn't do justice to the hilarity and heart of this silly and sublime experience.
September 07, 2015
NealsPaper
Exit the King — Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium at Walnut 3
by Neal Zoren
Mortality motivates me.
The way death affects life interests me so much, I attend, when possible, a monthly group discussion called The Death Café in Center City Philadelphia.
It’s not the morbidity of death that fascinates. Nor the macabre. It’s the way it informs life. Of course, I’ll take that trip to Copenhagen on my last dime. Life is finite. Remember that!
Even if one puts death in perspective, the fading and loss that frequently accompanies it, the demise of one’s person can be personally and intrinsically dramatic. I was with my parents and grandfather when they died. I insisted that an EMT try to revive a friend who was pronounced dead, a person who returned to life 45 seconds later. (Thank you, Jim Christy, for the gin and tonic you slipped me on that occasion.) The course to the end doesn’t go smooth.
Even for Berenger, a powerful king who has been command of many lives and puts an added value on his own royal existence. Justified or not.
In a zanily creative theatrical equivalent of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s “On Death and Dying,” playwright Eugene Ionesco shrewdly, comically, and solemnly depicts the defiance and acceptance of the inevitable. With his piercing wit and equally sharp perception, Ionesco entertainingly, but firmly, shows the banality, horror, vanity, and ultimate inescapability of death.
By choosing as his subject a king who wallows in his power and privilege, Ionesco illustrates how death comes to us all, even to a complacent creature who believes at one point he can just order it to go away.
The playwright’s “Exit the King” does not only delve into Berenger’s response to his loss of physical and mental vitality. It shows the reactions of people around him — the practical first wife, the weeping second wife, the cynical soldier who has been witness to the king at his grandest, most grandiose, most foolish, and most confused times, and the doctor who professionally and passionlessly ticks off the time left before Berenger must expire. Will he or nil he.
“Exit the King” is labelled as absurdist, as all of Ionesco is. I think “absurdity” is too broad and ameliorating a term for “Exit the King.” It is a play of masterful clarity. Berenger and Ionesco both have flights of fancy, and fantasy, but nothing registers as arcane or too far off the main point. A man is dying, and though his doctor and first wife stoically await and prepare for the end, Berenger will rage mightily, become irrational with his family and attendants, and attempt to impose his majestic authority, only to come, unwilling and unpleasantly to the realization he is about to end. The way we all know we will end.
I’ve seen various ways people respond to their final moments. My father, though plagued with severe dementia, watched intently and even wanted to take a walk before he passed into a rather peaceful state and declined into death. My grandfather opened his eyes every 10 minutes or so, and when he saw me, smiled and went back to his rest, only to wake again, look again, smile again, and rest again. I realized he would not agree to die while I was watching. So I let go of his hand, moved to a shadow outside of his sight range, and saw him look for the last time. Within two minutes, I called the nurse to tell her my grandfather had passed. My mother was the most amazing and heart-wrenching. Weakened to a bed-ridden state by cancer, she rose from her bed, stood on it and shrieked I had to save her from death, that if she stayed on that bed, she would die, and how would I feel about that? Nothing I did could comfort her or stop her horrors which, I learned later from hospice workers, were common. Even morphine could not still the anger, rage, and will to live. I helped her from bed to a chair, held her while she raged, and tried to administer more morphine. Her actual passing occurred calmly in a hospice, but the two nights she abandoned her helpless state and exhibited superhuman strength in asserting her desire for life were harrowing.
Watching Berenger in “Exit the King” recalled these passings to me in an oddly cathartic way. The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium production of Ionesco’s play was the first “Exit the King” I’d seen since my parents’ individual passing. I saw how cunningly Ionesco included traits of all of the experiences I witnessed. It was enlightening to learn, as I often do via theater, that our personal experiences are universal and can be put on a stage for all to understand.
Just as I think “absurdist” is too excusing a term for “Exit the King,” I think Tina Brock’s approach to plays as deep as Ionesco’s is anything but ridiculous.
Comic and unsentimental as it appropriately is, Brock’s production plumbs and displays all that Ionesco knows and wants to convey about death, diminishment, lost ability, and the reactions of the soon-to-be mourners. There is a wise, serious sensibility behind the fun Brock and her company provide. Robb Hutter, Philadelphia’s equivalent of a LaMama leading man from the 1960s, captures both the arrogant, commanding nature of the king and the person who tries to defy death. Unsuccessfully of course. Patricia Durante balances Hutter’s suitably clownish take on Berenger by being diamond hard and supremely practical as the king wends towards his demise. Durante’s long speech towards the end of the play encapsulates the reality of death and underscores its place in the natural order of things. She is an actress who rates more exposure in local productions.
Susan Giddings adds to her usual knack for getting offbeat characters just right by portraying the doctor as a realistic scientist who is only interested in the facts and even at the play’s most fanciful times, reminds that the king has one hour and ten minutes, forty minutes, or forty seconds to live. Giddings looks like a Medieval mystic, especially with the mustache penciled across her upper lip and cheeks. She provides humor and style while playing a character who is totally humorless and interested only in the realistic, scientific process of mortality.
Anna Lou Hearn is a puling, spoiled younger queen, Marie. Bob Schmidt has lots of fun exposing the intimacies of court life and revealing asides from the king’s life and battles. Jenna Kuerzi endows the elder queen’s waiting woman with the contradictory air of being better than her station yet knowing her place.
NealBoxBest of all, Brock’s production illuminates all Ionesco has to say about death, its approach, and its response from various quarters. Through performed as a cartoon, its elaborate ink-drawn set and various whimsical props adding to the humorous tone, and done as if death was a trifling matter to all but the king and the younger widow who will no longer be pampered and indulged, Brock’s staging reveals the stages of decline and the king’s reactions towards them. Robust and tyrannical at the time Giddings’s doctor issues his diagnosis, you see the king as he comes to grips that he is no longer able to be bombastic, that his limbs have joined a cadre of his subjects in not responding to his commands.
Berenger is not allowed to perish in a personal vacuum. His kingdom loses population as he loses life. The world crumbles as if dependent on Berenger’s point of view rather than the cold but intelligent pronouncements by Marguerite, the older queen, that nature is proceeding as usual and the businesslike humans will sort out any mess that requires attention when the moment of death arrives.
It to Ionesco’s, and Brock’s, individual credits that the ideas of fading physically into death and Marguerite’s discerning analysis exist so tellingly, and so neatly, while presented side by side.
Hutter can don helmets, brandish swords, and bark punitive orders, but you can tell that Berenger is a manqué, a monarch born to his inherited post but not up to its demands or requisite mettle. Hutter’s Berenger is a person of genuine power who wields it like a petulant child confusing authority with practical thought or wisdom.
In other words, he is a typical politician, but he is also one who must be obeyed and knows it.
Although “Exit the King” has only six characters, you get the impression Berenger rules a retinue. Though represented only by Schmidt’s soldier and Kuerzi’s maid, they stand for servants of all stripes everywhere who must listen to, and who subtly criticize, a despot.
Even before we know of his illness, we are aware that Berenger’s subjects are unhappy and affected by his narcissism and neglect. Even while playing the king as a clown, Hutter preens, postures, and makes a show of his royal clout. These displays of power will soon give way to Berenger’s resistance to death. His orders will ring of calls to take his people with him, or instead of him, to his end. He will negate the doctor, eschew the pragmatic Marguerite, and seek solace from the fawningly attentive Marie, the younger queen, and the occasional noble (yet jaundiced) memory of his guard.
While Marguerite is sanguine about Berenger’s passing, Marie is beside herself, not so much because of tender feelings for her husband but because she enjoys her role as mistress of all she surveys.
Marie is not as commanding, or as acerb, as Marguerite. She is all heart, but her heart is sentimental and doesn’t wend towards romance as much as to the jewelry, cosmetic attention, and obsequious fawning she receives as a queen.
Marie is someone who likes her place and hasn’t grasped the responsible aspects of it as Marguerite has.
As versatile and entertaining as Hutter is in Brock’s production, it is Durante’s Marguerite that anchors. Durante rises above and beyond the storybook style of the show to provide Ionesco’s reality checks. All else can be frothy and madcap, but Durante’s Marguerite speaks and behaves in dead earnest. (Pardon the pun.) She is all business and provides a telling contrast to all else that is going on. If matters become bizarre, Marguerite, more than the doctor announcing the measured passage of life as minutes to go, returns your mind to the serious, perhaps sad, business at hand. A man is dying, a man with many duties that must be addressed in addition to the act of his passing. He is man Marguerite alone can denote truly, as she is the only one who seemed independent of him. As a replaced first wife, she has her settlement and her own loyalties, especially from the maid, Juliette, and she can proceed with a cool eye and no qualms about a loss she already experienced when Berenger preferred Marie.
Marie, in comparison, is a mess. Played with exaggerated cupidity and childishness by a constantly crying Hearn, she stands for all the worst royal indulgence can produce. She is as selfish as Berenger, and as narcissistic, even if she claims to be sobbing for Berenger’s impending death and moving to comfort and coddle him when no one else will.
Marie’s crocodile tears may pretend to show heart, but is the doctor and Marguerite that engage your mind. They are duly worried about the simultaneously dissolving kingdom and restoring some sense of normality when Berenger passed.
Durante is especially impressive as a woman who understands the business at hand and goes to it using common sense and intellect. Giddings also earns high praise for the easygoing certainty of the doctor and the authority she brings to the role.
Erica Hoelscher’s designs for set and costumes capture and enhance the mood Brock’s production creates. The set is one large drawing that looks like something Edward Gorey might have imagined, although Hoelscher’s work is let imposingly Gothic and more fitted to let to pick out some fractured gargoyles or two. I particularly likes the screaming yet comic figure nestled in the fireplace.
From a practical point of view, Hoelscher’s set also gives Brock, Hutter, and other actors windows to use effectively. I likes the placement of the alcove the set provides for Schmidt’s soldier. Kate Coots painted the scenery and takes a bow with Hoelscher for its wit.
In terms of costumes, I liked the Disney princess gowns, furs, and curly long blond wig Hearn wore as Marguerite and the tight, almost pinched suit Giddings wore at the doctor.
Brock and Ionseco put dying in perspective by isolating the person who is dying and keeping us from getting emotional about him. I found it interesting, and at times disturbing, that my sympathy and highest regard went to Marguerite and the doctor as opposed to Berenger or the inconsolable Marie.
Hutter did not engender sympathy. He more involved you with the process Berenger endured between realizing he was losing strength and energy.That visual representation of loss is profound, but iIt’s Marguerite’s speech late in the play that puts death in perspective. Hutter was excellent at showing the licentiousness and capriciousness of Berenger as a ruler and lover. He was also wonderful at being flummoxed when his desire to live and recoiling from mortality spirals into the death the doctor reminded us, from the outset, would occur. The grim moment comes when the man has no option but to concede he is about to die. In character, Berenger does not face this bravely or with resignation but with a look of shock. It is a riveting moment in the production.
Brock also served as sound designer, in which she brought a sharp mix of often contradictory sentiments and moods to the production via music by disparate composers such as David Byrne, John Zorn, Sergio Mendes, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (although Mendes is probably more a performer than a writer).
“Exit the King,” produced by the Idiopathic Ridulopathy Consortium, runs through Sunday, September 20, at the Independence Theatre on 3 at the Walnut Street Theatre, 9th and Walnut Streets, in Philadelphia. The production is also considered an offering of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival that continues through September 20. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets range from $25 to $22 and can be ordered by calling 1-800-838-3006 or by visiting www.idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org or www.fringearts.com.
September 8, 2015
WHYY - Newsworks: SHAPIRO ON THEATER
Fringe review: Exit the King
by Howard Shapiro
This is the state of the king, as detailed by his court: His palace is crumbling, his fields are fallow, his fountains are sinking and even the Milky Way above him seems to be curdling. And did we mention that he's being told by everyone – his astronomer/doctor (Susan Giddings) chief among them – that he's hours from dying?
Eugène Ionesco's absurdist "Exit the King" has metaphors that keep shifting – primarily, the king himself. Is he supposed to be God? Ego? Ideals?
And what about those in his inner circle – his pushy former wife (Patricia Durante), his current naïve trophy queen (Anna Lou Hearn), his housekeeper (Jenna Kuerzi) and his wind-shifting guard (Bob Schmidt)? Are they The Truth or do they each have two faces?
Ionesco's 1962 play lives in an intellectual minefield – that's both the fun of it and the frustration in watching it. In the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium production directed by the company's leader, Tina Brock, the actors start off so shrill and at such extremes, there's nowhere to go from there. As things get worse for the kingdom, they seem no worse than they were at a high-decibel level 15 minutes back. As things get worse for the king himself, all the characters who've been yelling at him are ... still yelling at him.
This high-energy exposition – as if to say "this is Theater of the Absurd!" – nearly steals focus from the king but Robb Hutter, portraying him, makes a good go of it. His portrayal frequently reminded me of Tiny Tim from the way he looks and sounds, which may not be a bad thing for this production. At least he seemed human against all his cartoonish pals.
The sad thing about staging "Exit the King" as a spoof comes when the play itself becomes sad at the end, as the king is guided into the netherworld by his former wife. Here, it's magnetizing, with Brock's direction and the eerie soundtrack (she also did the sound design) behind it, as Erica Hoelscher's crumbling-castle set becomes more like a path out of life. And so the production feels like two plays – the one that came before the last minutes and the one you see in its final throes. It would have been more absurd if the bulk of the play were performed as more real.
September 10, 2015
American Theatre
Philadelphia Fringe: It’s a Party, It’s a Sporting Event, It’s a Moving Target
by Jessica Foley
PHILADELPHIA: The Philadelphia Fringe Festival brings the world to Philadelphia and Philadelphia to the world. This year’s iteration, with a total of 140 shows on offer between Sept. 4 and Sept. 19, splits these missions neatly into two columns: Fringe Arts Curated and Neighborhood Fringe, with the former featuring international acts and the latter showcasing local artists.
There’s another difference between the two categories, as well: One is culled/curated, while the other, in classic fringe-fest style, is open to all comers.
“Experimentation and innovation has been the mantra of the Philadelphia Fringe,” says Nick Stuccio, cofounder, president, and producing director of Fringe Arts. “There has always been an adjudicated segment of the festival because we were interested in bringing contemporary artists who are really having an impact around the world here to Philadelphia.”
Stuccio cofounded the Fringe with Eric Schoefer, a former dancer/choreographer, in 1997, and though Schoefer is no longer associated with the festival or Fringe Arts, his playful nature set the tone of Fringe in the early days and has influenced Fringe productions ever since.
“We were inspired by the Edinburgh Fringe,” explains Schoefer. “Old City erupted into a five-day party, that served the work of artists like myself. I was performing in abandoned warehouses. If artists work in isolation, it’s hard to draw people, but if you have a bunch of people doing a bunch of work at the same time, it creates an avant-garde party atmosphere. “
Philadelphia is the “City of Neighborhoods,” and the Fringe has always been a platform for local artists like Tina Brock, a professional actress who launched her company, Idiopathic Consortium Ridiculopathy (IRC), at the Fringe in 2006 with Three One Acts: Albee, Beckett, & Ionesco. IRC has been a force in the Philly theatre community and a Fringe staple ever since.
For this year’s fest, Brock brought her production of Ionesco’s Exit the King.
“Oh, it’s not theatre—this is a sport,” Brock tells me outside of the Walnut Street Theater’s Studio 3. “At the auditions for Exit, I didn’t ask, ‘Who went to acting school?’ I asked, ‘Who played volleyball in high school?’ A word in a text written by Ionesco is not a word at all; it’s a ball that you’ve got to keep in the air. This play is about the moments of disconnect when life kicks you in the gut.”
Brock’s surreal production encapsulates the colliding artistic frenzy of the Fringe by honoring what she calls Ionesco’s demand that “the effects of theatre be magnified, underlined, pushed to the max.” Audience members walk down a red carpet littered with cigarette butts. The castle ceiling is crumbling, and the makeup on the actors is severe—red lipstick, rouged cheeks, powdered faces. Queens Marguerite and Marie wear gargantuan wigs and flouncy pink and gold dresses labeled “QUEEN.” Actor Robb Hutter, as the 400-year old King Berenger, hurls himself into a panic. (The circumstances are drastic: He is going to die at the end of the play and he knows it.) As we watch, audience members turn to each other and whisper, “Oh, so fringe.”
Philadelphia is also filled with alleys, and on a walk to Christ Church, performance artist Jenn Kidwell escorts me to an evening performance of Underground Railroad Game.
“Look at that!” she says, pointing to an actual crumbling brick wall. “Look at how beautiful it is. Why is it that when we are onstage everything has to be the thing? Flat. If a play takes place in an apartment, why would I recreate an apartment onstage? Reality is not real. We could be way more imaginative. Give me crumbling brick walls. If we stopped valuing realism so much, then we actually start to crack open how absurd reality really is.”
Kidwell and Scott Sheppard’s Underground Railroad Game, produced in association with Lightning Rod Special, explodes these boundaries with a serious purpose: to crack open the history of the institution of slavery and how we talk about it in 2015. Sheppard originally intended Underground to be a solo piece based on his experience learning to play the interactive Underground Railroad Game in fifth grade, while studying the Civil War. Two years ago, he was hanging out with Kidwell, who was then a fellow classmate from the inaugural class at Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training, and they decided this should be a two-hander.
In the spring of 2014, the show had a developmental staging at the Church of the Crucifixion, believed to be a stop on the historic Underground Railroad. Stuccio and Fringe Arts program manager Sarah Bishop Stone happened to be in the audience, and they approached Sheppard and Kidwell about mounting their show as a Fringe Arts Curated production.
“I was there when Underground Railroad played at the Church of the Crucifixion,” says Dan Hodge, cofounder of Philadelphia Artists’ Collective. “I like plays that question who are we and how far do we think we’ve come?”
Founded in 2008 by five artist/managers—Hodge, Krista Apple-Hodge, Charlotte Northeast, Damon Bonetti, Katherine Fritz—the Philadelphia Artists’ Collective breathes life into rarely performed classics. Hodge’s one-man adaptation of Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece was a hit at the 2014 Fringe Festival, which posed the same questions: Who are we, and how far do we think we’ve come? Hodge is asking them again in this year’s Fringe production of Edouard Bourdet’s The Captive, which he is directing.
“Bourdet’s play was a scandal in 1926,” Hodge explains. “Irene is in love with a woman who we never see. Since same-sex marriage was only recently legalized, this is still very much a hot-button issue that needs to be explored.”
The production is at the Physick House, an historic Philadelphia home. “Our Fringe productions always seem to be site-specific—there is something to be said about the immersive quality that that gives you,” says Hodge.
“Fringe is a great time of year for us,” Hodge continues. “It’s a time when theatres get to do shows that are beyond audiences’ expectations. We get to push our boundaries…It is also an important time because it’s the time when we grow our audiences,” Hodge continues. “People go to see plays during the Fringe festival who don’t normally go at any other time of the year.”
“All the writing in this production is actually the actors,” says Trey Lyford, who plays Krogstad in A Doll’s House. “Strømgren was really open to us rewriting our words to make it flow off our tongue.”
Indeed, though Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House in 1879, Strømgren’s production—choreographed, developed, and rehearsed in Oslo—is so fresh it makes you feel like it was written an hour ago. As audience members take their seats, Suli Holm and Pearce Bunting, as Nora Helmer and Doctor Rank, respectively, are tossing coins into a tiny cooking pot and dancing around it saying, “Cha-cha-cha.”
Since we are at the beer garden outside the Fringe Arts building, it’s just a short walk over to the Fringe Arts box-office camper to see Belinda Haikes’ Compass, part of another branch of, and recent addition to, the festival, Digital Fringe.
“Digital Fringe was sparked by our desire to showcase artists’ work that is not easily performed in a theatre,” says Jarrod Markman, coordinator of the Neighborhood Fringe. “There are only 16 [productions] this year, but they are all kind of different. Some of them are pure video, and others are more app-based technology.”
Haikes, a South African designer based in Philadelphia, says she created Compass “to explore how far technology can take us.” From the beer garden, the heart of Fringe Arts, Haikes’ Compass digitally engages cellphone animations from the four farthest points of the Fringe’s neighborhoods (north, south, east, and west) to create what Haikes calls “a metaphor of displacement.”
“One thing that is true then that is true now: The Philadelphia Fringe was created with an idea of flexibility,” says Deborah Block, producing artistic director of Theatre Exile. Block was part of development conversations about the Fringe in its early days. “Fringe leaves you with more questions than answers. In my 10 years working with Fringe, I consistently asked, is the work we present pushing the boundaries in content or form? That has always been true. Fringe will always be new, always changing.”
September 10, 2015
Foley Got Comped
Philadelphia Fringe Notes:Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's Exit the King
by Jessica Foley
In Conversations with Ionesco by Claude Bonnefoy, Ionesco says: “ I had just been ill and very scared and I wrote Exit the King in 20 days, from a place of anguish which was very clear. This is a play that is wide-awake..”
This wide-awake production encapsulates the colliding artistic frenzy of the Philadelphia Fringe more than any other. Brock honors the fact that Ionesco demanded that “the effects of theater be magnified, underlined, pushed to the max…”
We walk into an anxiety attack down a red carpet littered with cigarette butts. The castle ceiling is crumbling, the makeup on the actors is severe Mac Lady Danger- -red lipstick, rouged cheeks, powdered faced Queens Margarite and Marie under obvious gargantuan wigs dressed in flouncy pink and gold dresses labeled “QUEEN”, actor, Rob Hutter, as the 400-year old King Berenger, hurls himself into a panic, The circumstances are drastic: he is going to die in 90 minutes at the end of the play and he knows it.
One of the most compelling moments occurs between Jenna Kuerzi as the Juliet the maid and Robb Hutter as King Berenger, the first. Juliet says: “I wake up in the pale light of the morning and work all day, my back hurts, I am tired.”
The King, growing weaker by the second in a wheel chair, looks up at her saying: “I did not know there was pale light.” It’s as direct and thrilling as watching Bernie Sanders look directly at Allan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2013, saying: “Mr. Greenspan, …You just don’t know what is going on in the world”
In theory it’s invigorating to “take down the Rich man, or the 1%, but to watch Robb Hutter, as King Berenger collapse on the catwalk, is not funny. We squirm in our seats as we watch Berenger stripped of his power bit by bit. Ionesco holds a microscope up to nature. Only when the King is faced with death does he bother to ask:
“Does not an ant protest when faced with extinction?”
Death is the great equalizer. The rigid social economic structures between servant and master topple. The sun refuses to rise, the chef won’t cook breakfast in the morning because there will be no tomorrow morning for the King. The walls disappear around him and he begs us the audience for help, but what can we do? Interrupt the play?
Everything about this production was so electric, people turned to each other, whispering: Ooo yes, so very Fringe..." or “Happy Fringe”