The Bald Soprano Review

The Bald Soprano Review

What to say about an 'anti-play'? For this is what Eugune Ionesco set out to create when he sat down to write The Bald Soprano, one of the seminal texts of the Theatre of the Absurd. Language is pivotal, yet speeches mean little or nothing. 'Anti-logic' rules in this surreal parody of a dinner party.'

Absurdity is sovereign, and Sally Welch's production certainly conjures adeptly with the futile, ridiculous world of the absurd. In The Bald Soprano, this has been done principally through stressing the comic aspects of the play. Ionesco drew his inspiration from an English language manual, whose characters, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, receive their friends Mr. and Mrs. Martin for dinner, filling the time with empty platitudes about the weather, living in the country, and catching colds.

The Smiths and the Martins of Ionesco's text, however, gradually become more and more faceless as language comes to dominate them. As a result, one could almost complain of too much character development here. As each couple has their own particular dynamic, their all-important lack of identity is sometimes suppressed. Also glossed over are the more searching epistemological and logical questions of the play. If the doorbell rings, must there be someone at the door who has rung it?

The Fire-Chief-holding-a-garden hose comes to our philosophical aid, of course, and promptly exits again, leaving the Smiths and the Martins to their meaningless, frenzied tirades. 'To Hell with polishing!' screams Mr. Martin, with perfect desperation, while Mr. Smith recites the vowels of the alphabet. Turning the chiming clock into a living character was an appropriately sinister touch.

The best performance of the night - because of the truthfulness of married couples- is how Mr. and Mrs. Smith were both focused on what they were doing until Mrs. Smith has a thought jumped through her head. Mrs. Smith starts to give the audience a piece of her mind on how she sees the world and at the same time, trying to gain the attention of her husband.

With that, the worst performance of the night had to be when the projection screen was brought down and showed a news reel. Not that there isn't anything wrong with the acting in the news reel, but the use of it entirely. I understand what the purpose was; showing the rest of the world is just as messed up