Let me some up the best new play I've seen on broadway this year by saying this: I'll be shocked if Mark Rylance doesn't win a Tony Award for his portrayal of Spain's King Philippe V. For nearly the entire play, he is onstage, often deranged but always commanding attention. For that matter, the entire cast was great.
The play is Shakespearean in its scope and ambition. The fact that it's a historical play only makes it seem more timeless, though Farinelli and the King premiered in London in 2015. The music that accompanies the action lets the audience feel the way music can serve as a healing power even as we watch the king stammer in and out of sanity, with his bouts of reasonableness usually buoyed by the presence of the opera star Farinelli's music.
Playwright Claire van Kampen has done a magnificent job with a classic subject: an unhinged ruler presiding during perilous times. Many people see parallels between her King Philippe and the current U.S. President, but I see our current administration and his entire party as more corrupt and disingenuous than crazy (though there's certainly an element of that at play too). At any rate, the play is not so much a satire about our current times as a timeless meditation upon music's solace for the soul.
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