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Exit the King
Did anyone see the current Broadway Version?

Exit the King

xzJoel
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Joined: Aug 30, 2005
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Posted 06/12/09 - 06:33 AM: Subject: Exit the King	#1
I saw Exit the King last night and was wondering if anyone else saw this play. I read in some paper that it was supposed to be an existential play, so I thought it would be nice to see. So as not to ruin it, I did no further research on the play before seeing it. While watching the play it struck me as an encounter of a solipsist with realism with a touch of "will to power" and dream doubt thrown in. I really did not get the sense that it was an existential play at all, but rather a mortality play. By "mortality play" I mean a play in which the character confronts his mortality for the first time and realizes that he is going to die. I suppose there was a notion of insignificance in time - of obscurity in the distant future no matter what you do, but that isn't existentialism to me. I was looking for themes of awareness of the nothingness and the bold assertion of value and meaning, not the trite exercise of will to stay alive forever. I am wondering, was it changed for the American production? Was the original play more existential? Did the reviewer, perhaps, not know what he was talking about? What, if anything, made the play absurdist? (As Eugene Ionesco is alleged to be an absurdist playwright.) Your thoughts are appreciated. Maybe we can talk a bit about some of the philosophical references. All in all I was pretty disappointed with the profundity of it all, but maybe I missed something. http://www.backstage.com/bso/revie...-the-king-1003964773.story (May not have been the review I read, but includes references to “existential darkness.”)
"For there is such a distance between how one lives and how one ought to live, that anyone who abandons what is done for what ought to be done achieves his downfall rather than his preservation." Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince", Chapter XV.

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