A rehearsed reading of one of the masterpieces of absurd drama

With actors Stuart Goodwin, Melody Grove, Nicholas Bendall, Lucy Ramsden, Lotte Allan and David Brett

Directed by Vasile Nedelcu

Co-produced by Mike Sengelow

No charge. For reservation: thefrowshow@gmail.com

A wildly off-kilter exploration of ego and mortality: King Bérenger the First only has the duration of the play to live. The big lesson of Ionesco’s theatre – absurd or not – is that the theatre should always be theatrical; in his own words: “simplified and grotesque, violently comic, violently dramatic”.

With each of his plays he tried to go beyond the immediate reality: “The World is an illusion. It is unreal but grounded on a superior reality which we try to understand.”

ATELIER & THE FROW SHOW, two small and ambitious theatre companies, are in the early stages of developing their first co-production, drawn together by the ethos of Eugène Ionesco theatre and their love of poignant comedy.

Considered the uncrowned king of absurd theatre, Eugène Ionesco remains one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century alongside the likes of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Arthur Adamov and Harold Pinter.

EXIT THE KING was first produced in England in 1963 starring Alec Guinness and was successfully revived to great acclaim on Broadway in 2009. This absurdist exploration of ego and mortality is 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.

Photo by Roger-Viollet / Topfoto

‘The most moving of all Ionesco’s plays and, if only from the width of its sympathies, it is incomparably his greatest work’ (The New Yor Times, 2009)

Poster Design by Anca Albani