EXIT THE KING

Unless you are a huge fan of existentialist theater, you’ll probably find A Noise Within’s revival of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist comedy Exit The King a very long hour and forty-five minutes.

That’s not to say that director Michael Michetti, his six-member cast, and the production design team don’t give it their all, but rather that elements that contribute to my enjoyment of a play—a compelling (or at least moderately interesting) plot (or really any plot at all), realistic (or at least moderately interesting) characters I can care about (or at least feel something for), and dialog that doesn’t come across as nonsensical—are pretty much absent here.

Admittedly, this is pretty much the opposite of what le théâtre de l’absurde is about, and though I raved about Ionesco’s absurdist The Chairs when A Noise Within staged it back in 2011 and was tickled by his equally wacky The Bald Soprano at City Garage, such is not the case with Exit The King in which a cast of symbolic characters spend a very long hundred-and-five minutes expounding on the last ninety minutes of the exiting King Berennger’s (Henri Lubati) life.

 Number One Queen Marguerite (Joy DeMichelle) announces that the walls are cracking, the kingdom is shrinking, the sun is cooling, and people are disappearing.

Number Two Queen Marie (Erika Soto) can’t stop the tears from falling despite Marguerite’s admonition that red eyes spoil her beauty.

Domestic helper/registered nurse Juliette (KT Vogt), frets that despite her having just given His Majesty’s bedroom a good cleaning, those darned cobwebs keep coming back.

The King’s Doctor (Ralph Cole), who doubles as his Surgeon, Executioner, Bacteriologist, and Astrologist, declares that “Mars and Saturn have collided, the sun has lost between fifty and seventy-five percent of its strength, and snow is falling on the North Pole of the sun.”

The Guard (Lynn Robert Borg) alternates between proclamations of “Long live the King,” “The King is dying,” and “The King is dead! Long live the King!”, no matter that the His Majesty’s ticker is still ticking.

And if anyone attending the production is expecting things to move forward with any semblance of logic, they are hereby advised to leave such expectations at the door.

All this being said, if theater of the absurd is your thing, feel free to ignore what I’ve written and relish the absurdity of it all along with the colorful performances Michetti has elicited from his fabulous cast.

In my own case, however, I don’t know if there’s anything even a director with a track record like Michetti’s could have done with Ionesco’s script that would have made me like it more.

I will confess to having laughed more than a few times early on, however by the time Exit The King reached its overly drawn out finale, one that leaves only two characters occupying a now entirely bare stage, whatever pleasure I’d experienced at the start was long gone.

At the very least, Exit The King looks and sounds great.

Tesshi Nakagawa has designed a luxurious throne-room set framed by sumptuous red velvet draperies and featuring Stephen Taylor’s fanciful properties with a prominently displayed Exit sign above the imposing door and Angela Balogh Calin’s costumes combine the elegant and the whimsical, and are ideally complemented by Tony Valdés’s deliberately exaggerated wig and makeup designs, and all of the above has been gorgeously lit by Jared A. Sayeg with Jeff Gardner’s impressive sound design completing the absurdist mix.

Alison Rodriguez is casting director. Jon Paul Burkhart, Paige Collins, Richardson Cisneros Jones, Aisha Kabia, Jean Kauffman, and Shawn Law are understudies.

Marco Rivera is assistant director. Matt Walker is clown consultant. Miranda Johnson-Haddad is dramaturg. Hope Matthews is stage manager and Morgan McDonald is assistant stage manager. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

Having been bowled over by A Noise Within’s magnificent Death Of A Salesman just over a month ago, I was hoping Exit The King would make it two ANW winners in a row, and this may well be the case for absurdist theater lovers. For this reviewer, at least, it ends up being just one out of two.

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena. Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30. Saturdays at 2:00 and 7:30, and Sundays at 2:00
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
May 10, 2026
Photos: Craig Schwartz

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

 

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