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“The King is completely delirious!” cries the Queen.

“Not completely,” replies her maid Juliette, “There’s too much sense in what he says.”

This, in an aptly named nutshell, is the experience we encounter in Eugene Ionesco’s “Exit The King” — it is at once absolutely mad and utterly serious. We are in the world of the Theater of the Absurd, a landscape comprised of equal parts tragedy and vaudeville. The Wilbury Group has wholly realized this world in a deft and delirious production co-directed by Rebecca Noon and Josh Short. Ms. Noon, Mr. Short and their talented cast have created an experience that is wholly hilarious and ultimately haunting.

How best to describe “Exit the King?” Suffice it to say that the entirety of the play’s action is contained in the title. The king is dying, a fact that is related to his highness and the audience early on. “The King will die at the end of the show,” Queen Marguerite informs us, “in one hour and 40 minutes.” What follows is no more or less than a comedy about death, a madcap meditation on the meaning of mortality and the absurd tyranny of our own ego when faced with the awful inevitability.

“Who has given such an order without my consent?” demands his Highness King Berenger the First. Once, we are informed, this mighty regent ruled over millions, nature bowed to his command and his reign spanned centuries. Now, though, his demise is nigh, his kingdom has shrunk and he uses his tiny ornate scepter as a crutch. For all his former might this is a king who never wholly knew himself and, Lear-like, ultimately becomes just a man as we all are: all alone and fearing the dark.

But this is a sort of “Lear “ as it might have been written by his fool and our delusional king becomes an everyman here, emphasizing our own inherent absurdity “stuck in the mud of life.” Ionesco reminds us that facing down the inevitable truths of our life, and our death, require courage of the most ridiculous kind.

Though his demise is always a certainty, it’s the journey toward the exit itself that provides the requisite entertainment and enlightenment here, a trip that The Wilbury Group is eminently capable of pulling off. What Noon and Short wisely realize is that while absurdism as a literary form is often a parody of realism, too often in execution the results are contrived to cartoonish proportions, diminishing the whole. What is well realized here, with all its inherent wackiness intact, is the depiction of wholly relatable characters caught up in a hopelessly absurd situation. The abnormal here is simply depicted a matter of fact.

This is a difficult tightrope to traverse, but this cast does so nimbly. What is a particular delight is how well the collective faces of the ensemble mirror the prevailing mood. All assembled here serve well as a sort of emotional barometer reflecting the many whims of our king, but the empathic skills of Melissa Bowler as Juliette are particularly adept. She’s a marvel at wordlessly and hilariously displaying the appropriate emotional temperature of the room, her features subtly expressing a gamut of feeling. She makes the hardworking maid absolutely heartfelt and a joy to behold.

Excellent performances

Jed Hancock-Brainerd is superb as King Berenger; his countenance is capable of assuming roller coaster proportions, his many moods turning on a dime. Yet for all that mania, he remains utterly charming throughout. His demeanor is that of a man quite used to enjoying and indulging himself and yet he radiates a true, if somewhat goofy, humanity, and his quiet moments of existential angst assume tragic proportions. It is a thoroughly realized and funny performance.

Co-director Noon plays Queen Marguerite with a nicely nuanced, sly and dry delivery. Frequently breaking the forth wall and delivering information directly to the audience, she serves as a cognitive conduit for us. There’s another queen, Queen Marie, the King’s second wife, and Lara Maynard plays the role to petulant perfection.

No local actor does a sour deadpan quite so well as Bobby Casey and his delightful performance as the doctor may well be the definition of subtlety. For sheer concentration many kudos belong to Jeff Hodge, who, as the guard, stands at attention throughout the proceedings quietly reacting drolly and making ludicrous pronouncements.

The show is well-aided by the throbbing sound design of Cyrus Leddy that serves to draw one into the interior of a dying, crumbling king and Robert Haflinger’s clever set design which ably demonstrates how a breaking heart can tear the world asunder.

While taking these proceedings absolutely seriously, Noon and Short use the bodies to create some hilarious stage pictures, many of which would gladden the heart of any animator. The production drives with alacrity toward its inevitable end, making a nearly two-hour intermission-less show seem a lot shorter that it actually is.

Laughing in the face of death is perhaps the best way to insure that death be not proud, but such denial is of course absolutely absurd and utterly human. While this excellent production of “Exit The King” embraces this absurdity with sheer gusto, what lingers long after the laughs is how poignantly it depicts the act of letting go. Berenger’s relinquishment, the awareness and acceptance he finally embraces, becomes here, in the theater of all places, a casting off of artifice and the world’s illusional trappings, staring fearlessly into the ultimate reality that faces us all.

‘Exit the King’

WHERE: Perishable Theatre, 95 Empire St., Providence

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday to Saturday and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sundays, through Jan. 15

COST: $20 general, $15 for students and seniors; pay what you can Sunday afternoons

MORE INFO: info@thewilburygroup.com; www.thewilburygroup.com