Queen Street News Toronto

Theatre: The Chairs, 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival
In the case where the self is merely
represented and ideally presented
(vorgestellt), there is not actual: where it is by
proxy, it is not.
- Hegel, “Phenomenology of Mind”
“The Absent Society”
The Stray Theatre Company is
staging Eugène Ionesco’s
masterpiece, The Chairs, at the
2012 Toronto Fringe Festival.
This tragic farce by the visionary
Absurdist is performed in the
dimly lit space of the Randolph
Theatre. Out of the darkness
emerge an Old Man (Michael
Greves) and an Old Woman (Dawn
E. Crysler); she sits in stillness
for a time, staring ahead into the
bleak abyss, while her husband
lingers at a window. Intoxicated
by the nocturnal landscape, he
gazes at the amorphous shadows
that form upon the surface of the
sea. The woman becomes
suddenly hysterical as she
ponders the treacherous,
midnight water that surrounds
them, seeping in through the
walls and windows of her
psyche. To distract themselves
they engage in the pursuit of a
realm that resides in imagination
and memory, a recurring
intrigue, a resolution to the
boredom of habitual solitude.
The sea becomes symbolic of the
unconscious fantasy, and the
boundary between illusion and
reality is progressively obscured.
Through incantations of
tenderness and self-pity,
expressions of beauty and
ugliness, arises the notion of a
sacred duty to communicate a
Message to the universe, to all of
humanity. The play is
thematically concerned with the
deterioration of language and
the profound effect this
produces on the collective, the
alienation of man (not only from
the other but from himself as
well), and the resistance to the
experience of existential beingin-itself,
rather illusion becomes
sacred as it provides a
withdrawal from life. “Within our
words we find ourselves,” writes
Ionesco, implying that it is
through language that we may be
able to perceive ourselves and
furthermore, we construct our
perception of the subjective or
objective notion of what
constitutes reality. On stage,
chairs continue to appear, but
remain empty; this lack becomes
the symbolic image of the old
couple’s intended distortion of
objective reality. However, their
mutual fantasy is abruptly
shattered with the arrival of the
Orator (Devon Jones), whose
presence
becomes
overwhelmingly ‘real’. He has
come to relay the Message, and
since their purpose then is
ultimately fulfilled, the Old Man
and Woman resolve to commit
suicide. From the windows they
leap into the murky water,
preferring the nothingness of
death to reality. The Orator,
remaining alone with the ‘crowd’,
attempts to speak. With
incomprehensible utterances he
struggles to make himself
understood, and we realize that
he is deaf and mute. In a moment
of ingenuity, he writes on the
chalkboard “Angel Food”,
unsatisfied he then writes,
“Adieu,
AAAMMM”.
Contemplating this act he
momentarily stands before the
roomful of specters, then
withdraws with a grandiose bow.
The stage is suffused with
shadows and only a pale
luminescence descends upon
the silhouetted chairs, an array
of voices reverberates in unison
with the murmurs of the
audience, and then softly fades.
Under the direction of Jack
Wieler, The Chairs is performed
with imagination, revealing the
paradoxically random order of
the existence. Ionesco depicts
the bizarre spectacle of the
human condition, and thus his
work remains relevant as it
functions outside of the
temporal. As I sat in the
audience, an enigmatic and
mystical procession of
apparitions crossed the
threshold of reverie and onto the
stage. Indeed, all of Ionesco’s
plays are an extraordinary
experience and I feel that if the
opportunity to witness the
pageantry of intellectual
deviance presents itself, dear
reader, consider it a favorable
circumstance.
torontotheater-reviews.com
is printed in five local papers. Story By: Nikoleta Curcin
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