The Bald Soprano
Good Fit
- Readers who want to meet the beginnings of absurdist theatre and Ionesco's style in a short text
- Anyone who wants to read a satirical play on language, cliché and failed communication
- Theatre and literature students; the edition also has Hasan Anamur's long introduction to the play
Not a Fit
- Readers wanting a traditional plot and character development: nothing happens in the play, language itself is the hero
- Anyone who wants to read a text of wordplay and logic in translation without loss
- Anyone who finds repetitive dialogue tiring
The play opens with an «English evening»: in a room full of English furniture, Mr Smith in English slippers reads an English newspaper, Mrs Smith mends English socks and the English clock strikes seventeen at nine. Mrs Smith talks without stopping: what they ate, the butter, the yoghurt, how Mary cooked the potatoes, what the children drank. Mr Smith only clicks his tongue. Every sentence is true, but together they mean nothing; the conversation fills the fear of silence, not content.
The talk moves from Dr Mackenzie King to the late Bobby Watson. Everyday logic breaks in strange ways: Mr Smith says «a captain goes down with his ship, so a doctor should die with his patient», then concludes «all doctors are charlatans; in England only the navy is honest». The clock strikes a different number each time (seven, three, none), so time too has lost its meaning like language.
The Bobby Watson scene is the play's most famous laugh: the dead Bobby Watson's wife is also called Bobby Watson, as are their children, his uncle, his aunt and his cousin; all are travelling salesmen, and in the trade there is competition everywhere «except Tuesdays, Thursdays and Tuesdays». People merge under the same names and lose individual identity. After a short quarrel the Smiths make up as a «ridiculous elderly loving couple» and the maid Mary lets the Martins into the room.
In scene four Mr and Mrs Martin tell each other «I feel I have met you somewhere» and the dialogue rises on a run of «how curious, what a coincidence!»: both left Manchester about five weeks ago, on the same train, in the same carriage, the same compartment; now they live in Bromfield Street, at number 19, on the fifth floor, in flat 8, with the same green eiderdown on the bed and a two-year-old daughter Alice — one eye white, one red. Each «proof» is spoken in the same flat, unchanging voice.
- Language takes the place of plot: clichés, mismatched conclusions and repetition carry the comedy
- The clock's meaningless strikes (seventeen, none) disrupt real time and strengthen the absurd atmosphere
- The Martin scene is a model of logic that piles up proofs: the same coincidences gradually become a fact of marriage
- Each «proof» is said in the same flat voice, which strengthens the comedy
The second play in the same book and another famous short work by the author
Another classic example of absurdist theatre
The author's longer and more political absurdist play
At the end of scene four Mr Martin thinks for a long time, rises slowly and says «there is no more doubt: we have seen each other before and you are my wife, Elizabeth, I have found you again!» Mrs Martin answers «Donald, it's you, darling!», they kiss without expression, sit in the same armchair and sleep; the clock strikes once very loudly, but they do not hear it. What follows is outside the scope of this review.
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