Exit the King eugÈne ionesco
translated by neil armfield & geoffrey rush
artist note: oliver dennis I’ve been ruminating about the rehearsal hall. This place. Here. You might be surprised to find out, given the requirements of the profession, that not all actors like performing in front of an audience above everything else. Some actors do, perhaps even most – but not all. Some prefer the rehearsal hall to the stage. Here is where the messy, embarrassing, mistake-laden, glorious, hysterical muck of being an actor is done. If you like discovery, if bravery moves you, if breakthroughs make you cheer, if friendship warms you, if a problem challenges you to overcome it, if laughter makes you joyful – you might like it here. Here, of course, is the realm of the director (I’m tempted to make some King analogy). Albert has been my director on a dozen or more shows. I couldn’t be prouder of the work he’s doing with us on this very difficult play. He’s directing with confidence, precision, humour and feeling. One of the advantages of doing so many plays together is the shorthand of communication. Sometimes without words and with a cheeky smile he can convey a note and we’ll giggle like kids. Here is usually a very private place. Actors, director, stage managers designers, dramaturge (if you’re lucky enough to have one). We’re not used to showing our work before we get in front of an audience with the final product – let alone showing the process. But here, in this rehearsal hall, we have had more visitors than in any production I can remember: students, the new Soulpepper Academy, our production sponsor and gentleman Phil Taylor, a novelist, company members. To us the life of the rehearsal hall is old hat, routine. But when you see it through the eyes of an “outsider,” you feel like you’re letting them in on a secret, giving them a taste of the alchemy of theatre. And it makes me wish everyone could experience that. It’s not possible to let you all into the rehearsal hall but my hope is that we can bring some of the rehearsal hall to you – to show you our discoveries, to be brave, to warm you, to challenge you and to make you laugh. Here.
Oliver Dennis, King Berenger in Exit the King
illustration: chris silas neal
exit the king eugÈne ionesco
1962
translated by neil armfield & geoffrey rush
production
cast
Albert Schultz director
Derek Boyes Guard
Lorenzo Savoini Set & Costume designer
Oliver Dennis King Berenger
Steven Hawkins lighting designer
Trish LindstrÖm Juliette
John Gzowski sound designer
Karen Rae Queen Marie
Toby Malone dramaturge
Brenda Robins Queen Marguerite
Nancy Dryden stage manager
William Webster Doctor
Janet Gregor assistant stage manager Kelly McEvenue alexander coach
Neil Armfield AO was the Artistic Director of Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney from 1994 – 2010. He has directed for all of Australia’s State Theatre Companies, Opera Australia, Canadian Opera, Houston Grand Opera, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Welsh National Opera. Neil’s theatrical highlights include the world tour of Cloudstreet; Exit the King on Broadway starring Geoffrey Rush (which won him a Tony Award) and Susan Sarandon and recently The Diary of A Madman also starring Geoffrey Rush at Belvoir Theatre and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Neil directed the feature film Candy (which he also co-wrote), starring Geoffrey Rush, Heath Ledger and Abby Cornish. For his role as pianist David Helfgott in Shine, Geoffrey Rush won the 1997 Oscar for Best Actor, a SAG Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and many more. Geoffrey won an Emmy for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers in 2004, and in 2009 was awarded the Tony for Leading Actor in Exit the King after a hugely successful Broadway season. He was Oscar-nominated for Shakespeare in Love, Quills and most recently The King’s Speech. Geoffrey’s other film credits include Les Misérables, Elizabeth, and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Geoffrey’s Australian films include Lantana, Candy, Swimming Upstream and the Oscar-winning short Harvey Krumpet.
generously supported by
This translation by Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush was commissioned and first produced by Malthouse Theatre and Company B, premiering on March 29, 2007 in the Merlyn Theatre, CUB Malthouse, Melbourne. There will be one 20-minute intermission. Approximate running time 2 hours and 20 minutes.
background notes Exit the King has been called a forgotten masterpiece. Eugène Ionesco’s one act plays, particularly The Bald Soprano and The Lesson, are more well known and more frequently produced. Exit the King got a new lease on life a few years ago when Australian actor Geoffrey Rush discovered it and (with director Neil Armfield) did a witty new translation. “Death is our main problem,” Ionesco once said, “all others are less important.” In this play, the eponymous King, Berenger, is presented this ultimate terror right off the bat: he’s going to die by the end of the day/play. His first wife, the pragmatic Marguerite, tries to prepare him. His younger second wife, Marie does anything she can to avoid dealing with it. Juliette, the Guard and the Doctor are all too caught up in their own aches and pains to care much about their monarch. In his notes on the play, Ionesco requires that the role of the 400 year-old King be played very physically. Berenger, he says, should be both dreadful and ridiculous and the production should play “like a tragic Punch and Judy” show. Who better in our company to embody those wild extremes than our great, soulful clown, Oliver Dennis? The kingdom depicted in this play is, appropriately, extreme, even absurd, but the situation is also eerily familiar. Marguerite refers to “disastrous wars” that have ruined the economy, used up natural resources, and killed the young. The once robust population has dwindled to a small band of old, decrepit people. Dykes have broken and the land is engulfed in floods. The sun has lost more than half its power. To say nothing of the great castle, which is quite literally – and magnificently in Lorenzo Savoini’s crooked, crumbling, surprising set – falling apart. The spine of this play is the crazed lengths to which the ancient King goes to avoid death. He decays before our very eyes, going from more or less functional to nearly immobile and barely able to speak. But Berenger struggles mightily against his incipient demise, crying out at one point: “Why was I born if it wasn’t going to be forever?” Which of us couldn’t second that motion? It is Ionesco’s genius that when Berenger says, “I want to start again,” after four hundred years of pampered, wasteful, self-indulgent life, we are with him all the way. Many have called Ionesco an absurdist but he disagreed. He considered himself a realist, depicting the world as it was: absurd, ridiculous, and painful. He hated authority figures (and conventional play structures). He detested rules. He adored play. He loved to laugh and delighted in confounding expectations and demanding the impossible. “I personally would like to bring a tortoise on stage,” he once claimed, “then turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre, and it is the place where one dares the least.” Surrender to this most daring, and iconoclastic of writers. Follow him on his impossible quest and experience the giddy thrill of laughing at death. Playwright Biography One of the most prominent playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco spent almost his entire life and career in France. He did not learn English until the age of 40, and did so by copying out whole sentences in order to memorize them. Like his contemporary Samuel Beckett, Ionesco came to theatre late in life. His first and perhaps most well-known play – The Bald Soprano – was not written until 1948, but it has now become one of the most produced plays in France. Exit the King (1962) was written at a time when Ionesco feared for his own life and subsequently deals with a character coming to terms with the inevitability of death.
Background Notes by Associate Artist Paula Wing.
soulpepper production Jacqueline Robertson-Cull
Phil Atfield Geoff Hughes
head of hair & makeup
cutters
Lindsay Forde Kiyomi Hidaka Janet Pym
Natalie Swiercz dresser
sewers
Katarzyna Chopcian
Karen Rod
Greg Chambers
Tracy Taylor
millinery
crowns
props builder
props buyer
Steve Hudak Duncan Johnstone Daniela Mazic
Jennifer Hambleton Stephanie Milic
Mike Keays carpenter
painters
scenic artists
soulpepper thanks: Mar-Lyn Lumber Sales Ltd., PRG Toronto, Dual Audio Services, Technically Yours Inc., Rosco Canada, ontario Staging Ltd., Gwendolyn Neelin (wardrobe student assistant). Soulpepper Theatre Company is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Scenic Artists and Set Decorators employed by Soulpepper Theatre Company are represented by Local 828 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
Soulpepper thanks
ELI & PHIL TAYLOR for their generous support of Exit the King
YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DISTILLERY HISTORIC DISTRICT