Word: ionesco
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...directors usually make up for the lack of performing skill by choosing off-beat plays; and this summer was no exception. The company kicked off with Goodrich & Hackett's The Great Big Doorstep, and followed it with two of Eugene Ionesco's avant-garde one-acters: The Lesson; and Jack, or the Submission. Neither of the last two is in a class with Ionesco's The Chairs; but both are intriguing if too drawn out dramatizations of his thesis that people just cannot communicate sufficiently through language. Jack was more imaginatively staged here than the New York production last year...
Frank Langella, who turned in two excellent performances in the Ionesco plays at Tufts a few weeks back, is a bit gawky and uneasy in the role of the young architect. Hopefully he will bring more poise and decisiveness to his movement as the run progresses. For he is one of the most versatile young actors seen in this community in quite a while...
...This is well and good when the desired effect is close identification with one or two characters, but when there are a large number of almost equally important people moving around the effect is divisive. It is perhaps significant that in its most satisfactory job this year, Jack, by Ionesco, Tufts changed the setting from a dingy room to a circus. This setting placed the audience in a reasonable relationship to the players. Further, the action of the play focuses almost exclusively on Jack...
...first production of the season the Arena Theatre last week presented the New England premiere of two plays by Eugene Ionesco, The Lesson and Jack, or the Submission. Ionesco's major thesis is that people simply are incapable of communication through the medium of language. Words are not understood, or have different meanings to different people. The tragedy of Ionesco's world is that people think words have meaning, try to use them to communicate and, hence, fail completely to know anything or anyone. The language of this world is the cliche and the pun. The normal reply...
Tufts Arena Theatre (Medford): June 30-July 4, Ionesco's "The Lesson" and "Jack"; July 7-11, Goodrich and Hackett's "The Great Big Doorstep"; July 14-18, Glasgow's "Allison's House"; July 21-25, Bagnold's "The Chalk Garden"; July 28-August 1, Ugo Betti's "The Burnt Flowerbed"; August 4-8, Giraudoux' "The Enchanted...