Angela Beyer and Bo Roberts (Photo by Paul Rubenstein)
Reviewed by Amanda L. Andrei
City Garage Theatre
Through June 2
RECOMMENDED
Upon learning that Eugene Ionesco was a playwright, Constantin Brâncuși, the father of modern art, told him that he detested theatre. Ionesco agreed. “That’s the only reason why I write plays,” the Romanian-French dramatist said to the Romanian-French sculptor, “to make a monkey of the theatre.”
After a few minutes of silence, Brâncuși retorted, “What did you think of Hitler?”
It’s a real-world absurdist exchange shot through with the artists’ shared cultural milieu of irony and dark humor. The winking attempt to disorient one’s conversation partner lives in much of Ionesco’s work, especially in The Bald Soprano. City Garage has remounted the 1950 one-act with wackiness and wile, deftly recreating Ionesco’s illogical world for an American audience.
Living in suburban Paris, Madame and Monsieur Smith seem like an ordinary middle-aged couple. Mme. Smith (David E. Frank) is both ebullient and neurotic, bouncing off the charming grouchiness of Mon. Smith (Andy Kallok) and making their strange tête-à-tête even stranger. Suddenly their conversation swerves into the peculiar — a bantering about a family with other members who all share the name, “Bobby Watson.”
The appearance of their dinner guests, the Martins, intensifies the oddities. An exuberant Mme. Martin (Angela Beyer) and an astonished Mon. Martin (Bo Roberts) discover through a series of obsessive details that they may, in fact, be married to each other. The creeping maid, Marie (Courtney Brechemin), disputes this claim directly to the audience, as if she is outside of time — then slips back into the couples’ world. It’s a moment that could go further in establishing the murky relationship between character and audience by creating a throughline for Marie as a complicit guide, but the action skips along before it can get too deep.
The upside-down clock above the plush crimson-and-black set (designed by Charles A. Duncombe) together with the ominous clock chimes (designed by Paul Rubenstein) create an uncanniness that feels friendly and welcoming, suggesting a place where we can all be mad together. Josephine Poinsot’s costume design is exquisite, with polka dots, leopard prints, and fire engine red accents delineating the differences between the couples and highlighting their eccentricity: Who matches their high heels to their partner’s house slippers and jacket, anyway?
Frédérique Michel’s direction indeed makes a monkey of theatre, choreographing each set of spouses to move in unison, rush across stage, and laugh maniacally. There are moments that are disturbing if you think too hard about it. A ringing doorbell with no one there. A daughter with one red eye, one white eye. A random gonging grandfather clock without the clock. But it’s a bold and fun choice by Michel and executive director Duncombe to spotlight the play’s neurotic humor (instead of existential terror) in their translation and adaptation.
Mainstream English translations of the classic render it more literal and British, which tends to dull Ionesco’s humor and rhythm. Choosing to establish the main characters as a French couple in Paris (as opposed to the original, an English couple in London) and alternating between French and English dialogue allows the audience to experience the world as original 1950s Parisian theatergoers might have. Alliterative quips like “Coco Chanel cocorico!” (the last word a translation of ‘cock-a-doodle-do!’) and the constant repetition of “What a coincidence, Mon Dieu!” allow us to soak up the non-sequiturs’ rhymes and find amusement in the arbitrariness of language’s sounds.
And it’s not just the sounds, but the semantics as well. When the self-assured Fire Chief with a winning smile (Gifford Irvine) appears, looking for fires, he finds none, prompting him to launch into telling “experimental fables.” His nonsensical tales evoke myriad reactions among the couples: fascination, boredom, horniness, befuddlement.
“What’s the moral?” Mme. Martin asks.
“That’s for you to find out,” he replies.
Ionesco dodged Brâncuși’s question, by the way, sensing a trap. The sculptor rambled on, philosophizing and verbally sparring with the dramatist, until he suddenly stopped. “A childlike joy came over him, his face relaxed in smiles,” Ionesco recalled, observing that his fellow artist was beginning to like him. Likewise, a similar emotional ride lives in City Garage’s The Bald Soprano. Beyond illusions of language and paradoxes of time, there is much amusement to be had.
THE BALD SOPRANO City Garage, 2525 Michigan Ave. Building T1, Santa Monica; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 4 pm; thru June 2. www.citygarage.org. Running time: 70 minutes with no intermission.
