Word: pupils
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Stephanie Gibbs (the Pupil) and Padraic O'Reilly (the Professor) worked together marvelously. Their timing was excellent and their flair for the absurd commendable. Through great costuming. O'Reilly had the exhausted, overworked look of a truly brilliant thinker--sunken-in eyes and a not-quite-close shave, combined with greasy hair and a slightly disheveled tuxedo...
...Gibbs' Pupil was perky, eager and hilarious. She tells the Professor she wishes to study for her "total doctorate," having completed her bachelor's and master's degrees, and demonstrates her knowledge by correctly identifying Paris as the capital of France...
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...
...this point the lesson breaks down, as the poor Pupil gets a toothache but is forbidden to leave the room. The Professor becomes a rampant spewer of knowledge, screeching at his Pupil with increasing ferocity. He ends up stalking her across the room with a knife in his hand, prodding her to pronouce "knife" in French, Spanish and Neo-Spanish. Her pleas of a toothache are too much for the Professor, who slashes at her and kills...
...this point the audience is left out of breath and slightly stunned. But the play turns beyond the macabre here, as the Maid and the Professor discuss what to do with the body. After deciding on a mass grave for the Pupil and the 39 other pupils the Professor has killed (we learn from the Maid), the Maid produces a red armband with a swastika on it, puts in on the Professor and tells him not to be afraid. "No one will ask any questions" if you wear this, she says and they leave the stage with the body...