Experiment and Vision in Ionesco's Plays

EXPERIMENT AND VISION IN IONESCO'S PLAYS GREEN PIMPLES on a beige skin, sell-propelled furniture, a heroine with three noses, a random-striking clock, a flaming horse's mane flying through the air-such theatrical novelties have made the FrenchRomanian playwright Eugene Ionesco a conversation-piece of the fifties. He invites ingenious labeling. One may call him a Chekhov of the bizarre, a Salvador Dali of the stage, an intoxicated Beckett, naturalist of the unnatural, etc. His plays draw a wide range of popular critical response, of which the American reaction may be cited as typical. Some judgments are conservatively indignant: ''hollow and pretentious fakery" (Richard Watts); "pedect1y awful" (Wolcott Gibbs). Others are patronizingly urbane: "an agreeable but thin talent" (Time); "these odd, elliptical fantastifications are amusing and provocative" (Brooks Atkinson). Others rise to warm welcome: "a master of a novel theatre language" (Harold Clurman); "a refreshing application of pure theatre" (Henry Hewes). Perhaps it is time to examine seriously Eugene Ionesco's output to date, as I shall do in the first section of the following essay, then his dramatic ingenuity, his artistic vision, and finally his presumed potential. Eugene Ionesco belongs to that contemporary generation of Parisian dramatists who have made a seismic. impact upon the intellectual theater: Sartre, Camus, Anouilh, Genet, Beckett, Adamov, and others. Of these, Ionesco is most often associated with Beckett and Adamov (Jean Paris calls them "the three French Hamlets"). Ionesco himsell was born in Slatina, Romania, on November 13, 1912.1 He spent his childhood in France, then returned to Romania in early adolescence. After becoming a teacher of French and a critic of literature, he came back to settle in France in 1938. With a publisher of law books he found work which has seen him well into his present career. He became a producing playwright but hardly a successful one with the May, 1950, premiere of The Bald Soprano (la Cantatrice chauve). This play was followed by The Lesson (la Le~on, composed 1950), lack or the Submission (Jacques ou la soumission , composed 1950), The Chairs (les Chaises, 1951), and Victims at Duty (Victimes du devoir, 1952). With the 1954 production of his first full-length play, Amedee or How to Get Rid of It (Amedee ou 1. See "Bibliographical Note" for sources of this section. Where I have assigned composition dates, my source has been the endnotes to the plays in the Gallimard edition. American premiere dates have been obtained from the monthly Theatre Am listings. The place and date Of Ionesco's birth are variously reported; for this article I referred to M. Ionesco through his publisher. 3 4 MODERN DRAMA May comment s'en debarrasser, 1953), Ionesco began to find a strongly interested public. He could now revive old failures such as The Chairs, as well as produce unstaged earlier efforts such as Jack. In 1957 a double bill of The Bald Soprano and The Lesson ran to 300 performances . His plays since Amedee include The New Tenant (le Nouveau locataire, 1953), Improvisation or The Shepherd's Chameleon (1' Impromptu de l'Alma ou le camelCon du berger, 1955), his second fulllength play, The Killer (Tueur sans gages, 1957), and his third fulllength play, Rhinoceros (le Rhinoceros, published 1959). His drama has been presented to highly curious audiences elsewhere on the continent and especially in London. He has reached American production with off-Broadway premieres of Amedee in 1955, The Bald Soprano and The Lesson in 1956, The Chairs and Jack in 1958, The Killer and The Shepheras Chameleon in 1960. Rhinoceros was given a Broadway premiere in early 1961. In 1958 Grove Press brought out two volumes in translation: Four Plays and Three Plays. The Killer and Other Plays and Rhinoceros followed in 1960. Besides his steady production of dramatic scripts, Ionesco has been sufficiently voluble as essayist and as one who has been often interviewed to start a flow of short but significant theoretical statements. Several are available in English. 2 The experimental theater of the twentieth century has yielded so many new stage devices that Ionesco, in anyone instance, might be proved a borrower; but in his passion to exploit, combine, and make...