King of Fools

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King of Fools paints a razor-sharp and darkly comic portrait of contemporary politics as a machine that produces its own victims—and its own useful idiots. As the presidential election approaches, a desperate and failing political party selects a convenient fall guy to embody the coming disaster. Their plan? Promote a decoy candidate internally, while secretly backing an outsider meant to triumph. But their chosen fool—a simple driver named Patrick White—turns out to be far less predictable than expected… and so do the voters.

Patrick suddenly finds himself thrust into the heart of a political operation he barely understands. When he uncovers evidence of a conspiracy surrounding the President’s death, he realizes he is not merely a witness: he has been designated as the next head of state. Around him orbit a constellation of manipulators:

  • Vanessa, a ruthless influencer,

  • Dominique Riviera, a cynical communications guru,

  • Alex Chatterton, a scheming advisor,

  • Claude de Casteljarnac, an old fox of the establishment,

  • Fred Uberman, a mysterious go-between.

As plots intertwine and betrayals pile up, Patrick understands he is nothing more than a pawn in an elaborate game of deception. What begins as political farce gradually mutates into a thriller: media coups, absurd storytelling, social networks in meltdown, private ambitions, and national-scale conspiracy theories.
King of Fools is a ferocious political comedy in which power manufactures its martyrs—and its perfect idiots.

Date of writing2017

Number of characters5 or 6 characters

CastFlexible casting options: 6 roles (1M/5F, 2M/4F, 3M/3F, 4M/2F, 5M/1F), 5 roles (4M/1F, 3M/2F, 2M/3F, 1M/4F)

Stage setThe campaign headquarters of a political party: a small office furnished with a table, several chairs, and a sofa.

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Genre Overview

King of Fools perfectly illustrates the realist societal comedy, portraying the political world without caricature yet revealing its most absurd mechanisms from the perspective of those who pull the strings.

It belongs to the tradition of political comedy, but one that leans decisively toward the dark and the absurd. The humour grows out of the vast contrast between Patrick’s guileless innocence and the ruthless cynicism of those who manipulate him—professionals who turn reality into spectacle and communication into weaponry. The playwright borrows elements from the thriller (manipulation, conspiracy, rising tension) only to subvert them with burlesque twists: misunderstandings, reversals, orchestrated lies.
The play sits firmly within a satirical lineage where politics becomes theatre—and where the backstage reveals more truth than the stage.

 

Thematic Panorama

The play exposes the increasingly blurred lines between reality and fiction in contemporary political life. As an ordinary driver suddenly groomed as a presidential figure, Patrick embodies the system’s need for a “pure face” to conceal its own moral collapse.

The theme of imposture runs through the entire text: imposture of power, imposture of language, imposture of identities reshaped for media narratives.

Other dominant themes include:

  • The runaway influence of social media,

  • The manufactured construction of a hero or leader,

  • The individual’s dwindling responsibilities inside vast political–media machines,

  • The system’s ability to absorb, repurpose, or sacrifice individuals depending on its needs—a recurring concern in Martinez’s work.

Dramaturgical Context

Within Jean-Pierre Martinez’s theatrical world, King of Fools belongs to his most overtly political vein: a theatre that exposes the construction of power as both a comedic mechanism and a tragic one.

The dramatis personae include archetypes of contemporary political theatre:

  • the absolute innocent,

  • the ambitious social climber,

  • the cynical spin doctor,

  • the Machiavellian strategist,

  • the entrenched power broker,

  • the ambiguous intermediary.

The play’s dramaturgy relies on a crescendo of plausible absurdities: each lie pushes the story deeper into the ridiculous, but always into a ridiculousness disturbingly close to reality.
The action unfolds in a single, in-between space—half private, half institutional—where strategies are crafted as if on a TV set or in a crisis room.

A compressed temporal frame—a few hours, a single night of political crisis—gives the play the pace of a political chamber drama.
Patrick’s evolution from spectator to victim to accidental “elect” follows the tradition of the passive anti-hero crushed by forces beyond his understanding.

Jean-Pierre Martinez constantly draws parallels between theatre as power and power as theatre, reminding us that storytelling, staging, and myth-making are the true engines of public life.

Character Types / Functions: Naive candidate, strategic communicator, influencer, political advisor, senior power figure, shadow intermediary, campaign staff, authority figures, power archetypes.

Set / Scenography: Political party headquarters, campaign office, enclosed professional space, strategy and manipulation room, liminal space between public and private.

Temporality: Realistic present, compressed timeframe, crisis night, linear temporality, political urgency.

Motifs: Political conspiracy, storytelling, conflicting polls, social media escalation, media manipulation, strategic deception, reversals, crisis communication, personal ambition, “useful idiot”.

Indexing Related to the Play King of Fools

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Copyright

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