The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco;
Translated and Adapted by Frederique Michel & Charles Duncombe
City Garage brings back its acclaimed production of The Bald Soprano by Eugene Ionesco. This mad, crazy, wildly funny play is the comic masterpiece that launched the Theatre of the Absurd. It was first produced in 1950 is now the longest running, continuously performed show in history at le Théatre de la Huchette in Paris. It's the story of an ordinary evening in the home of M. and Madame Smith that spins madly out of control as they entertain their guests, the Martins. Dazzling in its linguistic acrobatics, the play is a comic masterpiece of joyful, irrational anti-logic and a looney parody of the stolid, thick-witted world of middleclass propriety. In an escalating battle of banalities, polite conversation turns to confusion, then mayhem, and finally explodes into cheerful, liberating chaos. Simultaneously comic and profound, it is a short, sharp ludicrous journey into a funhouse mirror version of the world we think we know—and the truth of what we do not.
TOP TEN! RECOMMENDED!
“City Garage has remounted the 1950 one-act with wackiness and wile, deftly recreating Ionesco’s illogical world for an American audience… an uncanniness that feels friendly and welcoming, suggesting a place where we can all be mad together….Beyond illusions of language and paradoxes of time, there is much amusement to be had.
Amanda Andrei, Stage Raw https://stageraw.com/the-bald-soprano/
“Michel keeps her entire cast on the same absurdist page while giving them plenty of unscripted business to accompany Ionesco’s words….the entire cast is given moments to shine…Since its 1987 debut, Michel and Duncombe’s City Garage has established itself as the most adventurously avant garde of SoCal intimate theaters….The Bald Soprano adds up to an hour or so of zany absurdist fun.”
Steven Stanley, StageScene LA https://stagescenela.com/2024/04/the-bald-soprano/
