Exit Ranting

Something is terribly wrong. The king’s castle is crumbling; his subjects, the few remaining, ignore him; and, oh yes, he will be dead before the curtain falls.

   That’s Eugene Ionesco’s “Exit the King,†a highly theatrical piece from 1962 that director Jane Farnol opens with two henchmen playing cards in the throne room, listening to Archangelo Corelli’s (and others’) “La Folia.â€

   The Folly.

   King Berenger the First (played by Mark Feltch) has ruled for 400 years during which time he invented gun powder, and the tractor; he made the first airplane, split the atom, built Paris, Rome, New York, wrote plays using the name Shakespeare and conducted numerous disastrous wars. It’s been a notable reign, but “that’s all over,†as his first wife, Queen Marguerite (a marvelously imperious Jude Callirgos Robinson), tells him. Nations decline. And death happens. Even to kings.

   Berenger takes it like a 3-year-old in full tantrum, and Farnol has this limber and pajamaed majesty caroming around the stage in spectacular headlong tumbles, crying “I don’t want to die.†He will try anything: willing others to stand in his death stead, or at least accompany him (like Camus’ plague victims running out to embrace the unafflicted). He even tries to buy time asking, quite out of character, after the health and happiness of Juliette (Paula Digati Anderson), the castle’s remaining housekeeper. That doesn’t work either. The court doctor  — also executioner and proctologist (that latter position prompting the character to snap on a surgical glove he keeps at the ready) — (Kyle Minor), can do nothing. Nor can the king’s cheery and youthful current queen, Marie (Susan Abrams).  

   “I’m not above the law anymore,†the king wails, the law that mortals live by. The jig’s up. Death is a certainty. The only one.

   In a 1960s interview, Ionesco described his first visit to the theater: a puppet show in Paris. Other children laughed, but not the 4-year-old Ionesco. He was “smitten.† 

   That’s “Exit the King.†Hilarious. Odd. “An apprenticeship for dying,†as Ionesco said. And smiting: Götterdämmerung as vaudeville.    

   It looks like an apprenticeship for watching a nation founder, too. Take your choice. This TheatreWorks production is bewildering any way you take it. As it’s meant to be.

   “Exit the King†runs at TheatreWorks in New Milford, CT, through Oct. 9. For tickets, call 860-350-6883 or go to www,theatreworks.us.