The Bald Soprano

Written by Eugène Ionesco
Translated and directed by Rob Melrose
Performed by The Cutting Ball Theater
Hosted by The Exit Theater

Reviewed by Talia Baruch

Exit, on the shady end of town, is an intimate theater. An in-your-face intimate. When Mrs. Smith fills the stage, rouge hostess lips grinning, crisp, chirp voice piercing through the quiet theater, you forget the stuffy claustrophobia that crept in just a short minute ago, when the doors snapped shut and the lights switched off.

For the next 65 minutes, all sorts of absurd dialogues will unfold. They will be so absurd that they will make sense.

Makes sense?

Picture this: you’re on a family car ride out of town. You’re humming a tune, while your brother is tapping on to a completely different rap. You’re trapped in the same small space, isolated in separate bubbles, entirely oblivious of one another.

Sounds familiar?

Well, that’s what if feels like when, as an observant, you follow the characters communicate on different vibes, or rather miscommunicate. It’s like zapping randomly through different TV channels. Each channel lures you in to its autonomous universe, making sense on its proper plane, but ping-ponging between them leaves you jumbled.

In this Anti-play, the characters aren’t advancing a story line, resolving a conflict, reaching catharsis. They’re just there, in the moment, stating the obvious or abusing the state. of mind. They’re engaged in a meaningless banter and nonsensical story telling that would not shame Alice’s Mad Hatter Tea Party. It is language, not plot, that catches the spot light, pirouetting from the outset to the off set. The dialogues are delivered in clear articulation, resembling the Assimil method for teaching a foreign language through full sentences—tapes of random every-day life phrases, with odd association links.

“The sound of words, the rhythm, the rhyme, and even the tone,” says Rob Melrose, “are often as important as the meaning itself. So here, my goal was to preserve some of the schoolbook formality and awkwardness…” This is a bold theater form, even in today’s liberal standards, let alone in 1950, when the original production of The Bald Soprano débutedin Paris.

Ionesco showcases text as the center piece of the play in the same way a choreographer presents movement in a dance show, or a composer delivers music in a concert hall. By presenting text heavy with clichés, puns, repetitions and non sequiturs, Ionesco reveals the inadequacies of verbal communication. And the Cutting Ball cast carries these words through torrential seas as a loyal vessel, and unloads the cargo safely on shore.