Post by joem on Jul 6, 2022 10:30:11 GMT
Ionesco's classic theatre of the absurd play "The Lesson" is currently on at the smaller stage in the Southwark Playhouse. An old professor, living with his stern maid, is visited by a young pupil for a private lesson which starts going wrong when she develops toothache.
Having played the Professor many years ago and not having seen the play since, I was intrigued to see how the play would have weathered with the intervening decades. Michael Billington - one of the theatre critics I have respected most - more or less wrote off the entire genre of the absurd as now irrelevant. Given the events of the last two or three years, with pandemics, lockdowns war in Europe and attack on both individual and human rights, he might care to revisit this view?
The Lesson can be treated of course as a simple absurdist, at times farcical, comedy and it can be enjoyed as such. An eager but dim pupil, a pompous old professor whose sometimes hilarious wordplay is not intentional and a classic trope of education going wrong. For this it is absolutely paramount for the actor not to rush his lines, especially in the lengthier and more convoluted speeches, else the laughs are lost. This a pretty straightforward production of the play and it engages with the text reasonably well without quite taking flight.
It is of course meant to be much more than that and is at its heart an anarchic attack on totalitarianism not just in politics but, as the play posits, in education too. If nothing else, it is worth seeing as an important stepping-stone in the development of western drama but, pace Mr Billington, I suggest that beyond the flimsy premise and surface this is still a play which matters deeply.
Having played the Professor many years ago and not having seen the play since, I was intrigued to see how the play would have weathered with the intervening decades. Michael Billington - one of the theatre critics I have respected most - more or less wrote off the entire genre of the absurd as now irrelevant. Given the events of the last two or three years, with pandemics, lockdowns war in Europe and attack on both individual and human rights, he might care to revisit this view?
The Lesson can be treated of course as a simple absurdist, at times farcical, comedy and it can be enjoyed as such. An eager but dim pupil, a pompous old professor whose sometimes hilarious wordplay is not intentional and a classic trope of education going wrong. For this it is absolutely paramount for the actor not to rush his lines, especially in the lengthier and more convoluted speeches, else the laughs are lost. This a pretty straightforward production of the play and it engages with the text reasonably well without quite taking flight.
It is of course meant to be much more than that and is at its heart an anarchic attack on totalitarianism not just in politics but, as the play posits, in education too. If nothing else, it is worth seeing as an important stepping-stone in the development of western drama but, pace Mr Billington, I suggest that beyond the flimsy premise and surface this is still a play which matters deeply.
