ARTS A spectre is haunting Broadway: that of the weak play bolstered by stars. Although not new, this trend has reached flood proportions over the past few weeks: first God of Carnage with James Gandolfini, then Impressionism with Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, now Exit the King, with Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon.
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| Bravura performance: Geoffrey Rush (centre) |
Sententiousness is the besetting sin, though over-extended silliness is a close second. The subject matter – mortality – distracts us from the play’s weaknesses, just as its performers’ antics distract us from the work’s shortcomings, and just as comic trivialities divert humans in general and the ill in particular from dwelling upon dying.
Though mainly a tale of the 400-year-old monarch’s demise, Exit the King exhibits narrative context. The declining king, bearing the signature Ionesco name Berenger, presides over a wasted empire, drained by disastrous wars and misuse of precious resources. Such circumstances allow Rush and Neil Armfield, who together did the English adaptation (the latter also directed), to flaunt contemporary references, right down to Sarandon, as the old queen, saying of the palace’s washing machine: “We had to pawn it for the treasury bail-out.”
Unlike my experience at God of Carnage, I have to admit that Exit the King drew an occasional chuckle. Andrea Martin’s portrayal of a darting servant put me in mind of the 1950s television comedienne Imogene Coca; in fact, her interactions with Rush dredged up comparisons to Coca’s incomparable clowning with Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows.
But those were sketches. Exit the King is a languorous, stretched-to-two-acts play. Not even the most expert comic interplay, nor the high-energy exhibitionism of Rush (who’s headed for a Tony award as surely as a movie star who dies tragically in a biopic is assured of an Oscar), nor the pleasure of seeing Sarandon on Broadway after a 37-year absence, is sufficient to camouflage Exit the King’s deficiencies. ★★☆☆☆
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