“Silly, silly, silly.  This is getting far too silly”—this is what Monty Python’s Colonel would have said about The Bald Soprano.  I would have to say that I agree with him; although I did enjoy the play overall and thought that the actors gave great performances, I felt that the comedy of the play was sometimes pushed to the point of being annoying.

First let me say that I’m actually a big fan of absurdist comedies, particularly British humor (or would that be humour?), like the aforementioned Monty Python’s Flying Circus.  I’ve also enjoyed reading plays from the Theatre of the Absurd, such as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Waiting For Godot.  I personally like the fact that because the events of these comedies generally don’t make sense, they highlight the absurdity found in every day life.  One of my all-time favorite shows, Arrested Development, is quite simply about insane people doing insane things (it’s also where the title of this post comes from…I felt the need to do it).  Based on what I’ve just said, I should’ve loved The Bald Soprano.  So why didn’t I?

The answer to that question is actually pretty simple—there’s only so much absurdity I can take.  To me, a joke stops being funny and becomes irritating when it’s repeated over and over again with little to no variation.  Case in point—at the very beginning, Mr. Smith’s disinterested tongue-clicking in response to his wife was funny the first few times, but became progressively less so as the scene went on.  The same went for the good minute of awkward silence between the Smiths and the Martins, which was funny for about 15 seconds but then became rather awkward for the audience as well.  The interaction between the Martins and the scene with the doorbell came very close to being irritating, but Eugene Ianesco wrote in enough variety for them to remain generally fresh (it also helped that the actors were very good at selling the absurdity).  But perhaps this is what Ianesco was hoping to do to me—perhaps he wanted me to get frustrated to show just how useless language can be; in daily life people’s conversations generally are pretty repetitive, which the actors definitely reflected.

Speaking of the actors—I really thought they were fantastic.  A play so packed with non-sequiturs and ridiculous storylines could collapse under the weight of its own absurdity, but the actors played their characters like they really believed in what they were saying.  The women in particular were excellent at selling their characters; it can’t be easy to stay in character when the words coming out of your mouth are so ridiculous.

As for how this play spoke to a New York audience—although I’m not entirely certain, to me it mainly spoke of the absurdity of the world we live in.  One of the first things I noticed was that the floor was painted to look like the sky, which I felt really set the tone that the play was in a topsy-turvy world.  Perhaps Ianesco’s intention for writing this play was to show that even though we generally like to believe that we are all individuals, he believes anyone could be substituted into our lives because of the way we submit to the expectations of society—the Smiths and the Martins make sure to act in the “proper” British way and the play ends the exact same way it began, with a rather unimportant conversation about dinner, only with the Martins speaking the Smiths’ dialogue.

For British Eyes Only (Arrested Development)

I can, without a doubt, state that The Bald Soprano is the most unconventional performance I have ever seen.

Walking into the Pearl Theater, I had learned some background information on The Bald Soprano, which may have altered my perception of the performance slightly. Apparently, Eugène Ionesco had a completely different outlook on the meaning of the English Language; to him, the language was meaningless. When I enlightened with this information I was thrown for a loop, why try to convey a message that the English language is meaningless in the English language. Ionesco himself shed light on the fact that even a play about random people babbling on about nothing for an hour and 30 minutes could convey a message to an audience giving the English Language a meaning contrary to his beliefs. I was perplexed before the play even started because of this until one of my fellow classmates told me the play was written in French… (slaps hand to forehead).

Despite my faulty logic, themes could still be found throughout the The Bald Soprano. But in order to find them, one must simply stop listening to what the actors are saying after the first five minutes of the performance and observe their surroundings. The setting alone delivered a better message. First I have to say the set was perfectly constructed for this play, simple and yet so complex. The whole room was flipped; the dishes, the paintings, the candles sticks, the clock, and the shelves holding them were all flipped upside down; the sky was even on the floor! The topsy turvyness of this room made more sense to me than any line in that play. The set told me that The Bald Soprano was set in a world that made no sense, and that it was a upper-middle class English home. Both of which convey Ionesco’s message that the English language is meaningless, and also establishing a class satire centered on the people of the English upper-middle class.

In addition to the set design, I loved the utilization of the thrust stage. Thrust stages are amazing in general because it allows the audience to really immerse themselves into the play, analyzing each and every facial expression and body gesture, and creating the feeling that one actually resides in the world built by the performance. Despite all of that, The Bald Soprano called for a theater where the viewers could physically see both the audience and the performers side by side in order to emphasize the alienation felt for the characters, and the connection the characters made with the audience. Placing The Bald Soprano on a thrust stage emphasizes Ionesco’s point that the viewer acts just like the characters on stage. It is as if Ionesco is not only satirizing the upper-middle class English, but all of the upper-middle class, including New Yorkers. After the play I realized that most of the people who attended this show were in fact upper middle class New Yorkers, and I found it hilarious that these New Yorkers were laughing hysterically at what Ionesco depicted as themselves!

Although The Bald Soprano didn’t present a single line with any significance whatsoever, the first and last scenes displayed a very important theme. Ionesco wrote his play full circle, starting and ending with the same exact scene, but the characters were swapped. I found Ionesco’s idea very intriguing that everyone in the play was interchangeable. In present day almost everybody is trying to fit into the social norm whether they need to have latest fashion sense, buy the newest bit of technology available, or even try to be something you’re not. The Bald Soprano unveils how the upper middle class tries so hard to hold onto this act of being civilized. Most civilized people tend to speak so strongly about worldly affairs and major debates, but most of them don’t have a clue as to what they are talking about. The Bald Soprano depicts this idea so well during the argument about the doorbell between the male characters and the female characters, and the ending when they are all yelling nonsense to one another. Basically when someone said one thing, someone else would just say the opposite (one character said all the vowels, and afterwards the other character said all the consonants). I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Overall, I found The Bald Soprano clever, funny, and drawn out. I understand that Ionesco was trying to make a point, but he didn’t have to make us sit through an hour and thirty minutes of total nonsense. Basically the first and last fifteen minutes would have sufficed. I thought the acting was phenomenal, but I could only sit through a performance about nothing for so long. Half way through, I started to say in my head “Is it over yet?” over and over again. At first the performance grasped my attention but slowly I was taking it back minute after minute. Ionesco, I know you have passed on, but why did you have to make a play about nonsense so damn long!

I thought this title better suits the play