Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano” and “The Lesson” both opened on November 14th and ran until November 22nd in Seton Hill University’s (SHU) Reeves Theatre.
According to the SHU Communicator Staff, the play “takes a jaunt to Jolly Old England via Romanian-born French absurdist Eugene Ionesco.” Both shows are examples of early absurd theatre and were revolutionary of their time.
By Bethany Merryman
Arts & Entertainment Editor
Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano” and “The Lesson” both opened on November 14th and ran until November 22nd in Seton Hill University’s (SHU) Reeves Theatre.
According to the SHU Communicator Staff, the play “takes a jaunt to Jolly Old England via Romanian-born French absurdist Eugene Ionesco.” Both shows are examples of early absurd theatre and were revolutionary of their time.
Because the shows are categorized as absurd theatre pieces, Matthew Mlynarski, Assistant to the Director and a junior, expressed his fear that viewers wouldn’t come in with an open mind. “These shows are not like a normal night at the theatre,” he said, “If you don’t just let go and understand that you will not get a lot of what is happening and just take the shows for what they are, you are not going to be able to enjoy this wonderful piece of theatre history.”
The Communicator Staff said the first production; “The Balding Soprano” “parodies the British middle class culture and its meaningless language.” Assistant to the Director, Mlynarski said, “An interesting tid-bit is that ‘The Bald Soprano’ has been running in the same theatre in France for over 50 years.”
The Communicator Staff said the second play, “The Lesson” was “a semantic turn pedantic, then macabre in the dark and disturbingly funny companion piece.”
Mlynarski describes the message in “The Bald Soprano” and “The Lesson” as, “The destruction of language. To me it really shows that just because you can speak a language doesn’t mean you can communicate efficiently.”
Cast member of “The Bald Soprano”, Kat Fabbroni, sophomore, said, “I think these plays are interesting because they play on subjects without actually ever speaking about them out loud.” She explained that both plays had sexual references but were difficult to pick out while reading or even watching the shows.
The shows were so abstract that a cast member of both shows, Matthew Henderson, a junior, said, “The tone is very unique in that in some ways it leaves it up to the audience as to whether the bizarre things that are happening should be considered purely funny, or tragic, or a little of both.”
Henderson believes that, as an actor in the show he came away from plays just as perplexed as the audience. He agreed with Mlynarski and said, “I do think that he [Ionesco] wanted the audience to come away from both of these plays with a feeling of frustration at the lack of real communication between the characters, and perhaps strive for more meaningful communication and connection with the people in our lives after seeing how language can be so horribly mangled into meaningless chatter. “
Mlynarski said that the shows were casted a few days after classes began at the beginning of the semester and they have been rehearsing since mid September.
While the preparation is a lot of hard work, the end result is worth all the time put into the production. Henderson said, “It is exciting to see how an audience reacts to these plays, especially when there are people you know out there and you hear their distinctive laughs or (in the case of these plays) you can hear them going, ‘What?’ or ‘Okay…?”
Sarcastically Henderson said, “I keep waiting for the day where [the audience] gets so frustrated they just start throwing things at us or run out of the theater screaming with their hands over their ears.”
“The Bald Soprano” and “The Lesson” are the second to last production in Reeves Theatre. The last show, “Children of Eden” will mark the final performance in Reeves before the SHU Theatre department moves down to the new Performing Arts Center.
