Exit the King

Photo: Jason Bell

It's interesting to imagine experiencing Eugene Ionesco's work in the 1950s and ‘60s when it was new and groundbreaking. In the past four or five decades, many of Ionesco’s devices have become, if not commonplace, not unusual, and Ionesco's work simply cannot have the impact it once had. Exit the King, currently previewing on Broadway with Geoffrey Rush and Susan Sarandon, seems a bit like a museum piece, only intermittently brought to life, mostly by Rush’s staggeringly textured, physical, and brilliant performance and Andrea Martin’s comic timing and sheer likeability.