Not Only Opera

Exit the King
National Theatre, Olivier
Circle B7, £15
14 August 2018
NT page

Exit the King is the first Ionesco I have seen staged (oh my sheltered life) and I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it instead. Going in completely ignorant, I thought by the end that this was probably a late work, steeped in the self-indulgence of someone who knows we’ll listen whatever he does, who can wax on about death with little of the elusive shirkiness that’s so entertaining in his other plays. To discover it came only three years after the magnificent Rhinoceros makes me wonder what I would make of that all-time-fave if I saw it in the flesh.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t a lot I enjoyed about Patrick Marber’s swank adaptation, and indeed if a play could be saved by a production then this would be the production to save them all. The final set piece – I’m going to spoil it now, so if you plan to go please skip to the next paragraph – is spectacular, Queen Marguerite walking the king through the bardo as the stage falls away but for a red thread disappearing into the darkness which the king must follow – and after the applause comes the Beatles’ Sun King. It is such a striking and technically brilliant idea that I almost wonder if Marber and designer Anthony Ward came up with the image first and then found the play to go with it.

This final coup de théâtre is the cherry on the cake in a production that has had no expense spared. The benefit for the audience is that we get to see excellent execution in everything from stage movement to follow spots to sound design, meeting the National’s usual standards and surpassing them in deftness and simplicity. The semi-starry cast are all superbly chosen, each sending up their archetype while also finding ways to add surprising colours. So in all this is one of the best things I’ve seen at the National recently – it’s just a shame I found the play so samey. Back to the books for me.