The Chairs

Company: Queensland Theatre Company
Venue: Bille Brown Studio, West End, Brisbane
Dates: To 26 June 2010

You have to hand it to the cast and director for making an incomprehensible play completely entertaining. Director Brian Lucas did a brilliant job and certainly picked the perfect pair for the roles.

My brain is one of those that has never been able to hit the high intellectual standards needed for dissecting and digesting the Absurdist style of theatre. The only one to hit a nerve with me has been Harold Pinter with his chilling undertones of violence. Ionesco? I saw Rhinoceros many years ago and thought it silly rather than absurd and have not been near one since.

The Chairs however made me laugh and laugh a lot. I was asked by many puzzled audience members afterwards: “What do you think it all means?” My straight faced reply was: “That was the sound of one hand clapping.” Strangely Eugene Gilfedder tended to agree. “It is very Zen,” he said. So there you are.

On stage for 80 minutes are Eugene Gilfedder and Jennifer Flowers who play the Old Man and the Old Woman. They have been married for maybe 70 years they say and are strangely and obviously still very fond of each other. They talk, often with the repetition of old age, without argument or unpleasantness. The conversations range from childhood memories to predictions of doom, and delivered by the duo on stage wirth complete of the madness that ensues. There is also a lot of physical theatre for Gilfedder which includes hanging from a ladder in various poses and lots of removal work for Flowers.

This is no easy play for the actors, with recurring dialogue all over the place and a torrent of often unrelated words to learn. They both need to be congratulated for mastering such a difficult play.

The tone for the action is set in the opening scene. The Old Man stands at the top of a ladder staring through the window, describing, and admiring the view of the sea that surround their island home and the ships that sail on it. Then the Old Woman sets him right by telling him it is dark. Ah, he says, it wasn’t like that in the old days when it was always light outside.

The Old Man could have been a master something if he had applied himself we learn, but all he managed was to be a master of the bucket and broom in his job as a janitor. He is content, but the Old Woman dwells on the could-have-beens. He also worried why people thought, when he was 40, that her shouldn’t be sitting on his father’s knee. After all he said, I am not married so I am still a child,

That’s the sort of conundrum Ionesco keeps tossing up in this play. The pair are preparing for a party at which an Orator will come and declare all of the Old Man’s wisdom and his revolutionary ideas and prophesies. It has to be an orator because the garrulous old man declares he can’t talk well enough.

The doorbell rings and the guests begin to arrive. From here the laughs come thick and fast and the play slips into slapstick farce. The guests, which include a contingent of reporters, arrive thick and fast and the Old Man greets them all according to status. He is gracious, off-hand, sometimes as effusive as Basil Fawlty. As the guests arrive the Old Woman is frantically bringing out chairs to seat them. There are chairs of every description. Old chairs new chair, some without backs some without bottoms as they hilariously try to seat them all. These guests of course are all invisible.

The once-sided conversations that ensue brought out gales of laughter from the audience – and I still wan to know exactly what the Army officer and the young girl were up to that upset the Old Man so much!

The scene becomes more and more insane as time goes on, especially when the exalted King makes an appearance to much kow-towing from the Old Man. The height of lunacy comes when the Old Woman starts to sell programs and ice cream to the assembled multitude: A variation of loaves and fishes maybe?

Finally the Orator arrives. He is a robot, which is brilliantly portrayed by Dan Crestani. His oiled gigolo hair matched the oiled sleek movements of the robot. He was a perfect lounge lizard who then goes on to sign autographs! His arrival means the departure of the Old Man and Old Woman, still ranting and gabbling the pair climb up the ladder and sit on the windowsill. Then after more obscure message they fall backwards. There is a beautiful piece of Goon Show timing before two splashes are heard.

Then the Orator is ready to speak the Old Man’s piece, but he can’t get the words out. After all there’s not much you can say when you are dead is there?

I loved Bruce McKinnen’s cardboard set and the sound and lighting plots from Brett Collery and Caroline Emerson added heaps to the production.

I don’t think many will work out what is going on, but they’ll have a lot of fun trying

Eric Scott

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