Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
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by Eugène Ionesco, directed by Soheil Parsa
Modern Times Stage Company, Artword Theatre, Toronto
September 20-October 5, 2001
"Waiting for the Orator"
Master of the Theatre of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco's stock has certainly risen in Toronto this year. In April the Théâtre français de Toronto presented a double-bill of "Jacques ou La Soumission" and "L'Avenir est dans les Oeufs". In September Soulpepper presented a double bill of "The Bald Soprano" and "The Lesson". Now the Modern Times Theatre Company presents the 90-minutes play "The Chairs" to inaugurate the Artword Theatre's new space, the Artword Alternative. Director Soheil Parsa has made changes to the play but in ways that link it to other absurdist works.
"The Chairs" (1952) looks forward to similar themes in Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" (1953) and "Endgame" (1957). As in "Godot" we meet two characters who wait through the majority of the play for the person to arrive who will give meaning to their lives. The difference is that in "The Chairs" that person does arrive, or at least the couple thinks so. Rather than the two tramps of "Godot", Ionesco gives us a husband and wife aged in their mid-90s, who live on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere. As in Beckett we have the sense that some cataclysm has destroyed most of the known world.
As the play begins the woman, Semiramis, constantly praises her husband's brilliance (though he gives us no evidence of it) and cajoles him about all the high positions he could have had if the world had not been against him. Emotionally labile as the unnamed husband seems to be, all this talk of what he might have been alternately comforts him and depresses him. The wife herself uses the same words as praise or criticism depending on her mood. The two tell stories to entertain each other, finally becoming preoccupied with the husband's message to the world that will at last reveal his greatness. The husband says that he has hired an Orator to deliver this message since he is poor at public speaking. Soon guests arrive, invisible to us, and the couple start to bring in invisible chairs. Suddenly, in one magic moment, the chairs brought on become real and the space is filled with them. Just after the last guest, the invisible Emperor arrives, the first visible guest, the Orator enters. In an ecstasy of transport the old couple, now certain the husband's massage will be delivered, betake themselves to their graves. The Orator remains silent.
In the text, Ionesco gives a detailed description of how the set should look. It is to be a semicircular auditorium with ten doors and two windows. Parsa and designer Jan Komarek discard this. Instead, they place the couple in the corner of a dilapidated building with a (real) dirt floor and two child-size chairs. Komarek clothes them in rags and gives them an unreliable lamp to light the gloom. This immediately makes us see in the old couple "Endgame"'s Nagg and Nell before they were put in trash cans. The useless hopes of Ionesco's pair seem to look forward to the useless memories of Beckett's. The inhospitable setting makes the arrival of the invisible guests clearly the couple's fantasy.
Parsa has also altered Ionesco's ending. In the text, after the couple work themselves into a fit of rapture at the Orator's arrival, they hurl themselves out of the two windows. Parsa has the couple express their rapture and longing for death after they exit the stage but gives no indication that they actually commit suicide. This leaves open the possibility that the action will repeat as it does in "The Bald Soprano" or "The Lesson". In the text the Orator speaks gibberish and trying to make himself better understood writes (more gibberish) on a blackboard. Parsa has the Orator make no attempt to communicate at all. The Orator merely rotates his palms toward the audience in the attitude of Christ showing His wounds. Since the couple conceived of the Orator as their saviour this makes sense. On the other hand, the pose could suggest, incorrectly, that he actually is delivering the old man's message to the world.
The mandate of the Modern Times Theatre Company is "to use Middle Eastern theatrical tradition to ... explore the relationship between movement and text". And physical theatre this is requiring constant precise miming from the cast. Unfortunately, Parsa seems to forget about halfway through that the couple are supposed to be extremely old and gives them such strenuous physical movements that this undercuts the the nature of characters the two main actors have built up.
Peter Farbridge is excellent as the Old Man, making his frequent changes from pride to chagrin believable. Michelle Polak certainly captures the gist of the Old Woman, but next to Farbridge undercharacterizes her role. Both are excellent mimes. They are meant to progress from lethargy to frenzy, but Parsa has made them too energetic when the first guests arrive so that they don't have sufficient room to grow when even more energy is required. Komarek has made Ed Fielding look fittingly distinguished and enigmatic. The bleak setting is enlivened by Ben Grossman's sound design ranging from waves and boat horns to crowd noises and the elephantine groans of the Emperor. Parsa fortunately never allows the sound to overwhelm the words.
Unlike Jacques Lessard for the Théâtre français de Toronto, Parsa does not think Ionesco has to be made funnier. If anything, Parsa has made the play darker. Unlike the directors of the Soulpepper double-bill who gave Ionesco very straightforward productions, Parsa presents us with an interpretation that may be debatable in some details, but gives the play greater resonance. He reveals the play as one long crescendo of sound and action where the characters' "folie à deux" transforms itself into our "folie à nous" and asks us in our own chairs what meaning it is we wait for.
Photo: Peter Farbridge and Michelle Polak. ©2001 Modern Times Stage Company.
2001-10-03
The Chairs