Liz Lauren
James Ridge and Cassia Thompson in "Exit the King."
What’s a king to do when the Milky Way has curdled, the planets have collided, the palace is crumbling and the entire country is falling into an abyss? According to absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco, the only thing left to do is die. So for the duration of Exit the King, running in the Touchstone Theatre through Sept. 27, audiences see the King (James Ridge) receiving the news of his impending end and living his final two hours. As his practical first wife, Queen Marguerite (Tracy Michelle Arnold), continuously reminds him, “You will die at the end of the play.” The only thing for the audience to do is follow the frustrating, confusing, and absolutely absurd voyage from life to death.
In contrast to the morbid subject matter, much of the production feels like a journey through a carnival fun house. There are lots of laughs and pratfalls. Lights flash and the King goes to outlandish lengths to outrun, outsmart, and generally refuse his death sentence. There is also a Brechtian self-consciousness to the piece; actors chat with audience members as they arrange set pieces and check light cues before the show begins and hand costume pieces from a visible costume trunk to patrons in the front row. Directed by Tim Ocel, the show is a ridiculous ride through the classic stages of death and dying. A quack doctor (John Pribyl), a sensuous young wife (Cassia Thompson), and a soldier who cannot stop following orders (a very funny Casey Hoekstra) swirl around the King, making his passing harder and more fraught, even while they are trying to ease his way.
As the Everyman who fights, rages, claws, hides, and eventually succumbs to death, Ridge is frantically looking for a way out for the first half of the play. He grows steadily weaker and acquiesces one tiny piece at a time for the second half. The salt-of-the-earth maid and nurse (a hollow-cheeked Sarah Day) remarks several times in wonder that kings die just as common people do. Indeed, it’s hard not to think of hospital visits with friends and relatives while witnessing Ridge portraying the King’s decline. One minute he’s sulking like a spoiled child, but then he’s searching for solace in sex, or trying to leave a legacy of accomplishments in medicine and science. Ridge marches through it all, even delivering a heartbreaking silent soliloquy for almost eight minutes, telling a story using just facial expressions and body language. The Queen gently leads him toward the end, her voice steady as if reciting a meditation. And as the lights go down in a painfully slow fade (gorgeous design by Jesse Klug), Ridge’s facial features are obscured so that he is, in fact, any of us. And all of us.
Liz Lauren
Recruiters will stop at nothing in their quest to swell the ranks and woo the ladies.
Also onstage at American Players is The Recruiting Officer, a comical indictment of the lying, cheating, scheming and general skullduggery used by military recruiting officers. Restoration playwright George Farquhar was employed filling England’s army with young men before writing this comedy about men who will stoop as low as necessary to make their quotas of new enlistments while also fulfilling their basest desires.
Like street hustlers, the charming and disarming Captain Plume (Nate Burger) and the unabashedly devious Sergeant Kite (Jefferson A. Russell) roam from town to town in 18th century England duping the lower classes into signing up to be cannon fodder, and bedding as many women as possible. In the hands of these royal officers, the poor, backwards folk of Shrewsbury don’t stand a chance.
In a section of the play that goes on far too long, Kite wears an elaborate disguise as a fortune teller to further manipulate the bumpkins into enlisting.
Meanwhile, the spunky Silvia (Kelsey Brennan) dons her brother’s suit to pursue her love — taking the matter into her own hands instead of being ruled by her father or waiting for the fickle Captain Plume to make the next move. As much fun as it is to see a bold woman in breeches get what she wants, Plume doesn’t seem worth having, even though Burger infuses the cad with a heart of gold.
Marcus Truschinski’s self-aggrandizing Captain Brazen is an undeniable highlight of the production. With excessive bravado, clever swordplay and plenty of eccentric flourishes, he is one of the most noble characters in the play.
As the eager farmer’s daughter Rose, Cristina Panfilio is another bright spot — charming, if painfully gullible. Another one of Plume’s conquests, she cheerfully trades sexual favors and the promise of more recruits for the captain’s empty promises of money and respectability.
Modern sensibilities already undercut the humor of The Recruiting Officer. It’s no fun seeing powerful men with education and money take advantage of everyone around them, with no consequences. But director Bill Brown’s decision to put a few of the villagers in modern clothing — suggesting that this kind of exploitation continues in the present — boils away any laughs that would have remained in the final scene. So although The Recruiting Officer has some delightful moments, they don’t add up to a satisfying whole. Compounded with some opening night sloppiness — lights malfunctioning, props and lines being dropped — the play doesn’t really gel.
