The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco, a Curtainup off-Broadway review

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A CurtainUp Review

The Bald Soprano

By William Coyle

Just a minute…I admit it. . .all this is very subjective…but this is my conception of the world. My dream..—The Fire Chief

Bradford Cover and Rachel Botchan in The Bald Soprano

John Lennon once said to his interviewer, David Sheff, of the nonsensical Beatles song, “I Am the Walrus,” which he largely penned, “Dylan got away with murder, I thought. Well, I can write this crap, too. You know, just stick a few images together, thread them together, and you call it poetry.” Indeed, an entire school of poetics, known as Language Poetry, flourished in the seventies and the eighties, based on, essentially, playful nonsense. One might argue that the plays of absurdists like Jean Genet, Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, writing in the forties and fifties, served as part of a “big bang” which gave artists like Lennon license to, well, not make sense.

So it is with Ionesco’s classic, The Bald Soprano, now playing at The Pearl Theatre Company in a delightful version directed by Hal Brooks. As Mr. Brooks notes in the program, Ionesco wrote the play in French while he was trying to learn English.

People have been wondering for years what it “means.” Indeed, it might mean anything or nothing. It likely will have a different meaning to your theater companion than it will to you. Certainly, it’s meant to make us question some of our most basic facts about our lives, our senses of logic, and the world in which we live. Yet perhaps it’s best to leave questions of its meaning aside and just have fun with it. Despite its silliness, one still intuits that it is a work of some importance.

In The Bald Soprano reality unravels on “an English evening” in “an English interior.” A couple named the Smiths awaits the arrival of the Martins for a proper English evening at home. Bradford Cover as the tongue-clicking Mr. Smith reminded me of Roger Clarvin, Will Ferrell’s character in the famous Saturday Night Live “Lovers” sketches. Rachel Botchan is an impeccable and uptight Mrs. Smith. And Brad Heberlee and Jolly Abraham, as the Smiths’ house guests, Mr. and Mrs. Martin, cleverly employ ample amounts of body language to spice up an exchange between them with which Ionesco takes a little too long. Dan Daily looks and acts just like the Fire Chief you might conjure up in your head simply by reading the text.

With a homey set by Harry Feiner and at slightly more than one hour in length, The Bald Soprano is a short and sweet work – brilliant in places, corny in others, confounding in still others. Mr. Brooks, Dramaturg Kate Farrington, and The Pearl Theatre’s cast are professional and efficient, mastering Ionesco’s mad comedy and sense of fun, while resisting the urge to interpret it or posit its potential meanings.

The Bald Soprano
By Eugène Ionesco
Translated by Donald M. Allen
Directed by Hal Brooks
Cast: Bradford Cover (Mr. Smith), Rachel Botchan (Mrs. Smith), Brad Heberlee (Mr. Martn), Jolly Abraham (Mrs. Martin), Robin Leslie Brown (Mary), Dan Daily (The Fire Chief)
Scenic Design: Harry Feiner
Costume Design: Barbara A. Bell
Lighting Design: Stephen Petrilli
Sound Design: M.L. Dogg
Dramaturg: Kate Farrington
Production Stage Manager: Erin Albrecht
Running Time: 65 minutes, no intermission
The Pearl Theatre Company, 131 West 55th Street, www.pearltheatre.org
From 9/13/11; opening 9/25/11; closing 10/23/11
Tues., Thurs., Fri., Sat. @ 7:30pm, Wed., Sat., Sun. @ 2:30 pm
Reviewed by William Coyle, based on 9/22 performance

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