Review: Ionesco’s Exit the King Receives a Witty Revival at A Noise Within

A Noise Within’s new production of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist comedy Exit the King is witty, insightful, and unexpectedly moving. Death is the great equalizer, and director Michael Michetti underscores that idea with precision, aided by a buoyant and fearless cast.

King Bérenger the First (Henri Lubatti) is dying. After a 400-year reign in which he claims to have created the sun, fire, mountains, and oceans, he now finds himself frail, diminished, and with just 90 minutes left to live. His first wife, Marguerite (Joy DeMichelle), delivers the truth with unflinching clarity, while his younger second wife, Marie (Erika Soto), tries to shield him from the inevitable. Two servants (KT Vogt and Lynn Robert Berg) and the royal doctor (Ralph Cole Jr.) stand vigil as the king wrestles with his own impermanence.

Exit the King is the third play in Ionesco’s Bérenger Cycle, which includes The Killer and Rhinoceros. While this production stands on its own, one can’t help but wish the trilogy were presented in repertory, so that audiences could track Bérenger’s evolution. Seen here in Donald Watson’s translation, the work humorously dismantles the illusion of power. Leadership, no matter how grand, proves ultimately fragile. Even those who once shaped the world end up as powerless as anyone else—a comforting idea nowadays.

In true absurdist fashion, the cast approaches the material as though Shakespeare were being staged by asylum inmates. Lubatti, aided by Troubadour Theater leader Matt Walker’s expertise in clown work, throws himself into gravity-defying physicality, from backflips to sudden bursts of acrobatics. Soto is delightfully mercurial, veering between frantic despair and playful seduction. DeMichelle carries the heaviest burden as the lone grounded presence in a world of clowns, and she commands the stage, guiding the king toward acceptance with calm authority.

Vogt and Berg lean fully into their roles as servants, delivering heightened, stylized performances. Vogt contorts facial expressions into something mask-like, while Berg announces arrivals and departures with the exaggerated cadence of a dim, theatrical sportscaster. Cole Jr., as the doctor, lands each line with crisp articulation and precise physical punctuation, lending even the most absurd declarations an air of legitimacy.

Michetti balances comedy and existential dread with a steady hand, ensuring that the humor never undercuts the emotional core. The production exists in a deliberately ambiguous time, punctuated by playful modern touches, including an Alexa-like device that responds inaccurately, even when not addressed.

Tesshi Nakagawa’s crumbling yet ornate set features a looming Tudor-style door and faded red tapestry that suggest a kingdom in decay. Tony Valdés’s makeup design nods to commedia dell’arte: Soto resembles a delicate porcelain doll with exaggerated features, while Lubatti’s pale, layered face evokes a Pierrot figure.

Premiering in 1962, Exit the King predates Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying by seven years, yet it unmistakably tracks the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Through Bérenger, Ionesco transforms absurdism into something profound. What begins as a satire of monarchy becomes a meditation on mortality and the fragile illusion of control – a reminder that even the most powerful among us must, eventually, let go.