There are many reasons why you should see Exit the King, but foremost among them is the opportunity to see a brilliant physical comic performance by Geoffrey Rush. My companion at the show is an alumnus of L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, and he told me that the reason he was particularly excited to see this show is that Rush is an alumnus as well.
There was nothing like "Hair" when it opened on Broadway in April 1968, and there's nothing like the revival that opened last night at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. "Hair" was then and is now the most exciting new show in town, not so much a breath of spring air as a jolt of adrenaline.
With its alfresco setting and the penetrating echoes of its countercultural themes during an election year in which political disenchantment became endemic, the Public Theater's revival of "Hair" last summer in Central Park was a unique experience. So shifting it indoors could only dim the thrill, right? Wrong.
"Hair," the legendary 1960s American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, has made the jump from a summer Central Park engagement to Broadway with all its exuberance intact — and more. If you want to know why this joyous revival, which opened Tuesday at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, is so successful, you need not look any farther than the show's first-act finale.
"On Broadway, the spring season has brought imperfect productions of two transcendent musicals, West Side Story and Guys and Dolls. Now, to redress the balance, there's a transcendent production of an imperfect musical."
Ever dream of being a dancer on Broadway? Your day has finally arrived. Seriously. In the finale of Broadway's exuberant revival of "Hair," the audience is invited to dance with the entire cast onstage. It is a communal celebratory conclusion to a theatrical experience you will not soon forget.
This has to be the liveliest death on record. Never mind those scary figures of legend who kept on fighting with bullets, poisons and knives in their guts: Rasputin, Blackbeard, that psychopath from the "Halloween" movies. When it comes to refusing to shuffle off the old mortal coil, these men are all small time compared to his moribund majesty King Berenger, whose last hours on earth have been brought to life like a fire-trailing comet by Geoffrey Rush.
Plays about dying really don't get any funnier than Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King, now getting a rare Broadway revival at the Barrymore Theatre. But getting laughs isn't all that this piece is about; as the work unspools with wild and sometimes joyful abandon in Neil Armfield's beautifully calibrated production, it proves both cuttingly topical and surprisingly touching.
"Nothing's abnormal when abnormal has become the new normal," declares Geoffrey Rush, a short distance into his astonishing performance as the dying monarch in "Exit the King." It's that state of pervasive uncertainty, in a world thrown into chaos as an empire crumbles, that rescues Eugene Ionesco's 1962 absurdist tragedy from the dusty vaults and infuses it with unexpected currency.
"It's certainly not hard to root for Matt Cavenaugh's handsome, likable Tony, or the angelic but warmly coquettish Maria of Josefina Scaglione, whose sterling lyric soprano is perfectly suited to the role. Karen Olivo's witty, fiery Anita is another asset; she may not be the best dancer to ever tackle the role, but Joey McKneely's reproduction of Jerome Robbins' choreography lets her shine and the others soar"
