Exit the King News & Features
Written in 1962, Exit the King follows the slow death of 400-year-old King Berenger the First, whose reign has outlasted both its welcome and its allotted time.
Written in 1962, Exit the King follows the slow death of 400-year-old King Berenger the First, whose reign has outlasted both its welcome and its allotted time.
Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King is the story of King Berenger, ruler of a crumbling kingdom, who wakes up one more morning with aching bones, a failing liver and a really bad headache, among other ailments. Even worse, nothing and no one around him—not the weather, not his wretched first queen, not even his adoring second queen and trusty guard—obeys his commands. Since the King has ruled for more than four centuries, thus overstaying his welcome by about 200 years or so, it seems the administrators upstairs have made an executive decision—to terminate the King’s reign and his life, effective immediately. Not ready to give up the ghost, however, Berenger fights the inevitable as his mind and body shut down. Can this materialistic, greedy, cruel and uncaring monarch learn to let go of the one thing he loves most—himself?
