Long live Undermain’s ‘King’
Currently, the Undermain Theatre is presenting Exit the King which closes Sunday. The surrealist comedy by Eugène Ionesco is a play that director Tim Johnson always wanted to do.
He pitched it to his own theater Kitchen Dog but the timing didn’t work out. Undermain’s Bruce DuBose then asked Johnson to helm the show. “When he asked me, Joe [Biden] was still in the race, and it felt incredibly relevant,” Johnson said.
The show centers on a king, played by DuBose, who refuses to give up power and his kingdom is suffering because of that. Or, as Undermain describes it: Ionesco’s absurdist comedy set in the crumbling throne-room of the palace in an unnamed country where King Berenger the First has only the duration of the play to live.
Once, it seemed he ruled over an immense empire and commanded great armies, now his kingdom has shrunk to the confines of his garden wall.
