Word: lonesco
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With a keen eye for the absurdity both in our lives and in Eugene lonesco's play, directors Andras Forgacs and Agnes Dunogue presented a well-planned Lesson to audiences at the Loeb Experimental Theatre November 16-19. The Lesson is a short play (one hour long) ostensibly about a high-strung professor and his too-eager pupil. From the beginning of the play we get a sense of the ominous, as the professor's maid ushers in the fresh-faced girl with a look of disdain and a note of warning...
From there we move to the lesson itself. In a send-up of the theoretical bent of academia, lonesco presents his pupil as stunningly brilliant in philosophy and theory, yet unable to grasp the concept of subtraction. In a hilarious scene, the professor grapples with all kinds of examples--matches, fingers, ears and noses--to demonstrate the idea of "taking away," as the student merrily proclaims that two minus one is in fact two by the principles of logic...
...lonesco moves from the world of academic nonsense into the world of psychosis as the play progresses. The Professor begins to instruct his Pupil on languages, expounding on about 15 "Neo-Spanish" languages (which are so similar that they are in fact exactly the same...
...Eugene lonesco directed by Matthew Gentzkow...
...plot centers around a series of coups in an unnamed archduchy, in which increasingly more ruthless leaders usurp the throne. lonesco takes this all-to-obvious premise--e.g. that power corrupts--and revels in its inanity. While facing execution for leading an unsuccessful rebellion, Candor (Glen Whitney) declares that he is a historical dead-end, and that his "rebellion was necessary, if only to prove I'm a criminal." Much of the humor of the play arises from the hackneyed, emotionally-inappropriate intellectualizations in which the characters are endlessly engaged...