by Craig Ruff
April 16, 2009

Colleague Peter Pratt asked me what plays we would be seeing in New York City on a visit in late March. I mentioned Exit the King. Peter howled: “Really. Is theater of the absurd making a comeback?”

Mounting dramatic absurdists’ works like Exit the King (Ionesco) and Waiting for Godot (Beckett) to compete against Shrek: The Musical takes gutsy investors.

The gamble of resurrection works, at least in the case of Exit the King (Godot has not yet opened). People jam the theater. Their thunderous applause and critics’ praise probably mean that Geoffrey Rush, Susan Sarandon, Lauren Ambrose, and Andrea Martin will not be entering unemployment lines soon. Ionesco’s heirs may get some royalties.

So as not to insult the intelligence of readers knowledgeable about Exit the King…or waste the time of readers who are dying to know the link between the theater of the absurd and politics and society, I provide the sketchiest of plot lines. After 400 years of life, King Berenger the First is told that he will die before the end of the 90-minute performance. He won quite a number of wars, but lost the really big last one. A meteorological holocaust bedevils the land. He reigns over a handful of old, impoverished people. The palace is as decrepit as the nation he rules. Alas, poor Berenger finds it ignominious to be reminded of his nation’s descent into Hell, living amid the persistent bugs and cigarette butts infesting his living quarters, and told by fellow actors of his impending death.

Absurdity in theater arose in the 1940s and 1950s, as did its first cousin in prose, existentialism. It flourished in the 1950s and 1960s, led by Beckett, Genet, and Ionesco and later copycats like Pinter and Albee. Then, absurdity abruptly lost popularity.

When you are in the audience of the theater of the absurd, you must find it amusing. Much is Three Stoogish comedy. You want to be rational and make sense of nonsense, but absurdism like surrealism rejects the real and embraces the illogical. The theater of the absurd presents watchers detached pleasure. Let loose. Sit back. Relax. Don’t intellectualize or rationalize. If you, like I, enjoy emptying occasionally the cortex and take life for what it is, theater, society, and politics are immensely entertaining. If you are an absurdist (on which I teeter), as real things around you glide into serious dysfunction you find it all the more amusing.

If you can’t look at the side-splitting side of life as someone’s limbs are severed, you may lack perspective. You’re standing too close, as Dorothy Parker inscribed on her tombstone. You’re thinking way too deeply, getting a bit too close to the characters that you see on TV and the Internet.

It was thrilling to watch King Berenger croak (at least, with Geoffrey Rush in the acrobatic and insanely funny role). In real life, most people find absurd antics of the rich, famous, powerful, clueless leaders, idiotic tycoons, insipid leaders of do-good groups, and vapid pundits less funny. Too bad. Trust me, if you take the course of least resistance, get yourself a good 30 feet away from a television or computer screen, fall into a state of fantasy, and luxuriate in the moment, the basket-cases will entertain you.

Do you trust that a couple of dozen newbie regulators in D.C. know how to run an auto company? Would you entrust parenting of your child to Dr. Phil or Dr. Laura? Are you crazy enough to think that Chris Matthews or Sean Hannity could govern? Can you rationalize a Floridian calling 911 because she was inside her car and could not figure out how to get out? Could Genet or Ionesco envision the Texas legislature raising the speed limit to end the embarrassment of the state being the first in the nation in which gun fatalities exceeded traffic fatalities?

Times have always been goofy and goofiest for those scripted and center stage in politics, religion, or show business and those in their audience who fall for them. Neither the celebrities du jour nor their lap dogs allow themselves the sheer pleasure of being absurd or admitting that leaps of reason make more sense than indulging and comprehending.

The seriousness of the times and the importance of being earnest serve primarily to propel celebrities’ egos. Why do their audiences have to buy into that? We should laugh at their antics and puncture their pomposity. We’re the paying customers, after all.

The theater of the absurd merits a comeback — on Broadway, in D.C., in corporate boardrooms, state capitols, county courthouses, and entertainment media. Spare me the bloated and serious self-righteous. Send in the clowns.

Craig Ruff is, among many things, a senior policy fellow and former president of Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants.