“The throne is hard for royal haemorrhoids” complains Rhys
Ifans’s roi Bérenger in Patrick Marber’s production of Simon Scardiefield’s new
translation of “Le roi se meurt”/”Exit the king” provoking one of many chuckles
in the audience: a clever rendition of Ionesco’s more matter of fact “Ouf! Il
est devenu bien dur ce trône.” For me, this outburst summed up the translation and
the staging; however ingenious, it sits rather uncomfortably on its throne, constantly
anticipating pain and discomfort resulting from tackling this text, still so strange
and yet so central to European theatre; the play is cringing and moving cautiously,
trying to distract and appease the viewer with jokes that sound so natural in
English, Queen Marie’s seductive fake French accent and fake fur bolero that
keeps sliding off, with a giant syringe and a phallic telescope, working really
hard not to take itself too seriously yet bursting in the King’s increasingly heart-breaking
monologues.
At the end, you can’t help thinking it rather funny when the
remains of Berenger’s castle disappear and the throne, this instrument of Bérenger’s
torture, slides into an empty space and is consumed by a red light, like a
coffin in a crematorium.
