The Chairs / Les Chaises / Scaunele
By: Eugène Ionesco
Directed by: Gábor Tompa
Scenography & Costumes: Dragoș Buhagiar
Music : Rene Nuss
Cast: Oana Pellea, Patrick Le Mauff
Producer: Théâtre National du Luxembourg (Luxemburg)
In this play, Bertrand Poirot-Delpech saw in 1961 “the most accomplished of modern tragedies”. Ionesco’s third piece, created in 1952, is now a success that continues unabated.
The subject of the Chairs is, the author tells us, “the ontological void”: but it is also a personal drama, the mirror of a consciousness. We find the nostalgia of childhood, the feeling of guilt, the horror of old age and death. It is still a comedy that, very often, excites laughter with its clowneries, puns, parodies, pirouettes. It is a ballet: that of chairs piled up in the accelerated movement of a fantastic whirlwind, and which remain empty.
