Theatre
Exit the King
St James Cavalier

When greed and ambition taint human existence to the extent that nothing matters except our own personal gratification, the resultant social impact is a communication breakdown which deepens our sense of isolation and highlights the ridiculous state of the human condition.

Caught in a godless, aimless world, man becomes victim to his own worst traits and childish foibles and Absurdist theatre manages to put this across quite effectively. Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King produced by Theatrencore earlier this month was the third of the Berenger cycle of plays which depict the Berenger character in different guises and moods, in this particular case, as a 400-year-old dying king. Moreover, Berenger, played by Malcolm Galea, is a petulant, stubborn and irascible dying king – the perfect combination for exposing society’s ills through his “everyman” persona.

How can a king be “everyman”? We are all sovereigns of the domains of our own making – Berenger is no different. With a script translated by Donald Watson, the text itself is already rather complex to follow and because the theatre of the absurd was also meant to satirise the notion of the well-made play, Exit the King’s only nod to convention is a chronological development, which is, however, riddled with a disturbing confusion of simultaneous and seemingly unconnected incidents. Mr Galea made a convincing Berenger – so wrapped up in his own little world that he is blinded to the reality staring him in the face.

His strong stage presence was however marred by a slight muffling in some of his longer speeches as a result of the lengthy verbal diatribes he was flinging at the audience. Badgered by his first wife, the straight talking and rather fatalistic Queen Marguerite, played by a stately Monica Attard, Berenger is made to realise the severity of his situation; conversely his second wife, Queen Marie, a younger more flighty woman by whom he appears to be infatuated, panders to his whims and willingly participates in his frolics.

Stephanie Bugeja’s Queen Marie was rather too saccharine for my taste and while her demeanour contrasted well with Ms Attard’s more forceful Queen Marguerite, their dynamic with Mr Galea’s Berenger seemed to lack a particular connection. Interpreted more positively, this lack of connection could be seen as evidence of their strong personal isolation and communicative detachment, but it somehow failed to engage the audience in thought.

Chris Galea’s Doctor, Surgeon, Executioner, Bacteriologist and Astrologist – jack-of-all-trades charlatan type of character was a very well-wrought one and probably one of the better interpretations of the evening. He was equally conniving and cynically likable and established a presence that was sustained throughout the performance.

Aided and abetted by Mik Pisani’s Guard and Nadine Genovese’s Juliette, the nurse and domestic help, the doctor and the two queens attempt to direct Berenger’s wilful ways to more pressing matters relating to his health and the deplorable state of his country. Mr Pisani and Ms Genovese were equally adept in their roles and fulfilled their characters’ function with relative good form and timing. I wasn’t particularly convinced however, by the variety of different accents used by the cast – from neutral tones to nasal American and confused cockney.

The set, designed by Stefan Farrugia and Michael Farrugia, was bright, starkly lit and very busy with a chequer-board effect floor, a central swing and an eclectic array of props which added to the extraneous “noise” that life throws at us in the deafening silence of isolation despite the music provided by Mariella Aquilina and Ann Bugeja.

Director Tyrone Grima’s perspective worked on a visual level if not always as consistently on the matter of audience engagement. The detachment such a play was meant to put across to the audience was somehow exacerbated by the overall effect of the performance and at times succeeded in detaching their attention from the scope of the script, resulting in a somewhat uneven effect.

Irrespective of this slight inconsistency, the performance still managed to come across as an interesting experiment, if not an entirely satisfying one.