The Bald Soprano and The Lesson: Two Plays -- A New Translation

By Eugène Ionesco

Book Overview

Often called the father of the Theater of the Absurd, Eugene Ionesco wrote groundbreaking plays that are simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. Now his classic one acts The Bald Soprano and The Lesson are available in an exciting new translation by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tina Howe, noted heir of Ionesco's absurdist vision, acclaimed by Frank Rich as "one of the smartest playwrights we have." In The Bald Soprano Ionesco throws together a cast of characters including the quintessential British middle-class family the Smiths, their guests the Martins, their maid Mary, and a fire chief determined to extinguish all fires -- including their hearths. It's an archetypical absurdist tale and Ionesco displays his profound take on the problems inherent in modern communication. The Lesson illustrates Ionesco's comic genius, where insanity and farce collide as a professor becomes increasingly frustrated with his hapless student, and the student with his mad teacher.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802143180
• ISBN13: 9780802143181
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

the absurd at its best!

Ionesco promised to deliberately explore the post WW2 world by integrating the ABSURD (post-existentialist stream of thought) into the everyday life. He did it with such an ingenious way of portraying the lives of two bourgeouis couples who suffer the scandalous effects of WW2. By breaking all rules concerning grammar and the written way of expression as a means to justify the absurdity which lives inside of us and expressed orally with our "stream of consciousness". Pure genius on his writng skills, ionesco demonstrates just how far one can go just by simply observing the distortions of human relations when affected by dark historical moments...