Word: ionesco
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With The Chairs and The Lesson, Rumanian-French Eugene Ionesco, whose work has been about equally hailed for its meaning and hooted for lack of any, had his first professional Manhattan hearing. In The Chairs, dubbed "a tragic farce," an aged couple who live in a sort of wave-washed fortress give a party for a horde of guests who are only so many chairs. After the old man (Eli Wallach) has delivered a "message" about the world, he and his wife throw themselves into the water. Swimming in symbolism, The Chairs readily enough suggests people's enisled fate...
...curious combination of comedies is the new presentation at the Poet's Theater. Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano is almost pure farce, while The Lady and Her Sources, by the Spanish poet Pedro Salinas, is a sharply etched satire on professors and pedantry...
...Bald Soprano contrasts vividly with The Lady and Her Sources. Where Salinas had been ironic, Eugene Ionesco is abstruse, absurd, and abnormous. His "Anti-play" makes Waiting for Godot look pale and logical. Lines follow each other without connection, characters change identities, and the humor is always mixed with bewilderment. When there is logic, it is carried to such an extreme that it becomes ridiculous. Yet, every so often Ionesco shows us a glimmering of reality that other writers seldom uncover. InThe Bald Soprano the characters seem to say whatever comes to their minds--momentary antagonisms, sexual impulses, errant thoughts...