The Bald Soprano: A Christmas Anti-Play

Back by popular demand is City Garage's acclaimed 2007 production of Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano as a Christmas anti-play! In a new translation/adaptation by Artistic Director Frédérique Michel and Producing Director Charles Duncombe, this mad, absurdist classic is the perfect escape from the banalities of ordinary holiday fare. The piece will run in repertory with City Garage's current world premiere of Charles L. Mee's Orestes 3.0: Inferno at the company's new home at Bergamot Station Arts… Show more Center. 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 knowand the truth of what we do not.
The return of the anarchic smash hit!
"Eugene Ionesco's brilliant absurdist farce unfolds in a universe dislodged from logic and even common sense. Yet, even in this bizarre world, a good laugh is still a good laugh, thanks to director Frederique Michel's assured staging that comes marbled in cool irony. A middle-aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Jeff Atik and David E. Frank in drag), relaxes in a suburban living room not far from Paris, after having had a delicious dinner. Mrs. Smith rhapsodizes about the meal, while her genial hubby replies in incomprehensible grunts and gurgles. Suddenly, the Smiths' friends, Mrs. and Mr. Martin (Cynthia Mance and Bo Roberts), show up on the doorstep and soon the characters are squawking, babbling and ejaculating random bits of nonsense. Are they a pair of typical suburban couples? Or barking animals at the zoo? It's best to simply roll with Ionesco's wonderfully random and play-fully chaotic plot, which Michel sets with impeccable comic timing.The performers rattle off the non sequiturs with glee and gusto at times the piece resembles a long Monty Python sketch. Frank's turn as Mrs. Smith is particularly droll he plays the character as a frumpy suburban matron, but with buggy, lunatic eyes. Atik's harrumphing hubby and Mance's seriously deranged Mrs. Martin are vivid, multidimensional characters."
GO, LA Weekly
"Breaks all the rules, then gleefully incinerates the tome.The performance that best channels the play's surrealist vibe is [David] Frank's cross-dressing turn as Mrs. Smith. His robotic delivery and mildly deranged facial expressions are a perfect match for Ionesco. The gender twist proves to be an inspired bit of non sequitur casting in a play filled with verbal non sequiturs.The direction by Frédérique Michel further annotates the text with a hilarious set of bodily paroxysms. Rather than compromise the play, these alterations only enhance its strange, anarchic power."
LA Times

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