Ionesco's Apt Lesson Sends Up Its Own Questions

With a keen eye for the absurdity both in our lives and in Eugene lonesco's play, directors Andras Forgacs and Agnes Dunogue presented a well-planned Lesson to audiences at the Loeb Experimental Theatre November 16-19. The Lesson is a short play (one hour long) ostensibly about a high-strung professor and his too-eager pupil. From the beginning of the play we get a sense of the ominous, as the professor's maid ushers in the fresh-faced girl with a look of disdain and a note of warning.

From there we move to the lesson itself. In a send-up of the theoretical bent of academia, lonesco presents his pupil as stunningly brilliant in philosophy and theory, yet unable to grasp the concept of subtraction. In a hilarious scene, the professor grapples with all kinds of examples--matches, fingers, ears and noses--to demonstrate the idea of "taking away," as the student merrily proclaims that two minus one is in fact two by the principles of logic.

Stephanie Gibbs (the Pupil) and Padraic O'Reilly (the Professor) worked together marvelously. Their timing was excellent and their flair for the absurd commendable. Through great costuming. O'Reilly had the exhausted, overworked look of a truly brilliant thinker--sunken-in eyes and a not-quite-close shave, combined with greasy hair and a slightly disheveled tuxedo.

Gibbs' Pupil was perky, eager and hilarious. She tells the Professor she wishes to study for her "total doctorate," having completed her bachelor's and master's degrees, and demonstrates her knowledge by correctly identifying Paris as the capital of France.

lonesco moves from the world of academic nonsense into the world of psychosis as the play progresses. The Professor begins to instruct his Pupil on languages, expounding on about 15 "Neo-Spanish" languages (which are so similar that they are in fact exactly the same).

At this point the lesson breaks down, as the poor Pupil gets a toothache but is forbidden to leave the room. The Professor becomes a rampant spewer of knowledge, screeching at his Pupil with increasing ferocity. He ends up stalking her across the room with a knife in his hand, prodding her to pronouce "knife" in French, Spanish and Neo-Spanish. Her pleas of a toothache are too much for the Professor, who slashes at her and kills her.

At this point the audience is left out of breath and slightly stunned. But the play turns beyond the macabre here, as the Maid and the Professor discuss what to do with the body. After deciding on a mass grave for the Pupil and the 39 other pupils the Professor has killed (we learn from the Maid), the Maid produces a red armband with a swastika on it, puts in on the Professor and tells him not to be afraid. "No one will ask any questions" if you wear this, she says and they leave the stage with the body. The Lesson leaves the audience wondering just what it's trying to say. Is it just a sendup of academia? A metaphor for the Holocaust? You're not quite sure afterwards--nor perhaps, are you supposed to be. Forgacs and Dunogue have captured the spirit of The Lesson--part comedy, part human tragedy, all absurdity--and given audiences a treat. The performances are excellent and the direction apt. "The Lesson" leaves you wondering, but it also leaves you entertained.