The King is dead, long live the King! Hot on the heels of his smash hit, Newcomer of the Year award winning 2018 Edinburgh show, Don Rodolfo, Ciarán Dowd returns to the throne room to regale us with the tale of King Rodolfo. For those who missed the chance to bow down to him the first time around, you can now have an audience with monarch of mirth at the Queen Dome in the Pleasance Dome.
Rodolfo Rex is in session and Dowd joyfully splashes around in the shoes of the arrogant, self-obsessed and facetious King. Both charming the audience and creating an atmosphere of anarchy. He fills in his back story and graphically recounts just how he achieved his meteoric rise to the top. Spoiler… it was bloody, poopy and pus filled.
There is more than a little tongue in cheek throughout, with knowing nods to the accent which sways from Irish to numerous Mediterranean efforts in between.
Then a mirror is held up to the behaviour and manipulation tactics of a certain Cheesy Wotsit impersonating, cult leader-cum-ex-President. At this point, I realised that King Rodolfo possesses a similar ‘Dark Triad’ of personality disorders to the aforementioned Orange Terror: Narcissist, Machiavellian and a Sociopath.
While this makes for great comedy because we find it hard to believe anybody could actually behave like that, it is terrifying to witness in real life.
King Rodolfo is an hour that straddles both comedy and theatre to excellent effect and ignites the imagination with duels, feuds, politics, betrayals and of course… Dragons.
