When the king in EastLine Production’s presentation of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King finds out a doctor has given him very little time to live, his reaction is normal. He says what most of us would think, and many of us would say. “Tell me this isn’t true,” T. Gregg McClain, clad in a crown and royal attire, says as King Berenger.
McClain pleads with and prods the doctor, played with soft authority and professional detachment by John Torres. And he seeks support from his wives (he has two, played by Deborah Kruel Rupy and Chelsea Nelson-Fernandez) and from anyone who will listen. Yes, he has been close to death, but this is different. What follows in this show running through November 19, 2014 at EastLine’s theater at 2123 Wantagh Ave., in Wantagh, is an hour-and-a-half-long lunge forward, a play that doesn’t let the actors leave the stage or let go of the audience. Nobody seeing this show, directed by Daniel Higgins and produced by Jim Black, could mistake it for a true story. But its emotions are as true, touching and powerful as you’re likely to find on or off stage. If Exit the King was “Exit the Salesman” (Arthur Miller), Exit the Engineer or Exit the Accountant, it would be a tragic story. By making this about a king who tries to command the clouds, Ionesco has created the illusion of distance and a tragicomic, literary work as we gradually realize it is about ourselves and those around us. “I’m in very good health,” McClain protests, his eyes like sentimental Geiger counters picking up the slightest emotions like little earthquakes “You’re teasing me. You’re lying.”
While Exit the King’s characters have the feel of a fable, its emotions have the ring of reality, possibly because Ionesco wrote it when he believed he was dying. Higgins’ blocking moves us from tableau to tableau, creating a reassuring world like a newscaster narrating a calamity. Everyone works together rather than wandering around the stage. We see the world fall apart, as direction remains in control, warding off the chaos that’s discussed. “It is better to miss one’s friends than to be missed oneself,” McClain says in a tragicomic moment. Everything about this kingdom is evoked with suggestion (a crack in the wall is a crack in a crumbling castle) except for the emotions. The set, red curtains and a red fabric along with a bench for commoners and a tribal chair as throne, signifies a kingdom of people, not things. Where we are doesn’t really matter because the drama is universal with us as spectators and participants. McClain looks around at the audience and sees only strangers, like a man in a hospital bed surrounded by visitors. His clothing, demeanor and others' deference to him let us know he’s king, but in a hospital frock, he could easily be a patient fighting to survive. “So many worlds will flicker out in me,” McClain says in an eloquent, emotional (the two can go together) epiphany. Although the specter of death hovers over the play, Exit the King is more about dealing with death than the medical minutiae of disease. We never find out what is killing the king – beyond time. The diagnosis doesn’t matter. We watch Michael Schlapp, as the guard, go from force to desperation as he realizes he can’t defend his king. Deborah Kruel Rupy expresses resignation, becoming logical to shield herself from being emotional. Chelsea Nelson-Fernandez rebels against death, too young to recognize it’s real. “Since it is inevitable, at least it must be told as tactfully as possible,” Nelson-Fernandez, who pays the king’s younger wife, finally says.
We’re told the king must decide whether to fight or abdicate, a decision we all must make one day. Dying is abdicating, leaving the world for others. In our egomania, we all believe we are essential – and we are the creators of our universe, the kingdom in which we live. And yet, our lives pass so quickly. Rupy tells McClain he’s been king for centuries; he says it feels like minutes. Who hasn’t felt that way about decades that flash past leaving us with the essential enigma of life that we are both superfluous and indispensible? “I never had the time,” McClain says as he ticks off excuses for not doing things he wanted to. Exit the King is full of memorable moments that give us more common ground with this story about a king than I find at many plays. As I watched the king refuse to give up his scepter, I thought of a loved one refusing to give up his car keys once dementia hit. As McClain made excuses for not reading, I thought of my father and myself. As he rhapsodized about the beauty of something as common as a carrot, I thought about how we all take the world for granted. Every moment is a masterpiece that will only be made once. “It’s no longer of any importance if he catches a cold,” Rupy says of our condemned king and the rest of us condemned mortals.
The play even looks at our healthcare system as professionals manage moribund patients. Doctors often are heroes. But Torres’ doctor reasons rather than feels. We want conquest not courage. “It’s your majesty’s duty,” Torres says with a kind of gentle, if tragic logic. “Die with dignity.”
McClain talks about how even ants fight against dying. And yet we have to believe humans’ consciousness of our inevitable ending is both a blessing and a curse. “I know there was a world,” McClain says, shifting to the past tense, “And this world was all about me.” Archibald MacLeish wrote that poems should not “mean but be.” The same is probably true of plays. While many plays move through plots and complications, Exit the King is a tragicomedy about a single, universal tragedy. Higgins’ production is one long moment, a magic marathon without intermission, much as life is. “You’ve been condemned,” Rupy says. In addition to watching people wrestle with death, we also see them deal with each other. Rupy vies with Nelson-Fernandez as McClain tries to run away from age through a relationship with a younger woman. “Many people have delusions of grandeur,” Rupy says to Nelson-Fernandez, “but you have delusions of triviality.” Nelson-Fernandez, in other words, tries to downplay death. And the king seems childish when he tries to command the clouds. But like all good plays, this play is about us. Exit the King is a difficult play to present and a powerful one to watch. “I never had the time,” McClain says in one line that I keep repeating.
John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.’ Every moment arrives once in a day filled with a million ends. Yes, there are more important things than seeing any play. And in a world of electronic media, we can watch so much at home. But theater at its best is an experience that, even momentarily, changes how we view the world. Exit the King does that. If you can, make time to see this king and cast before they exit the stage.
I found myself exhausted when the play was over. I hadn’t been in the show, but, of course, we all were, which is what powerful theater is all about.
