Ionesco, Eugene in The Books Store

In Rhinoceros, as in his earlier plays, Ionesco startles audiences with a world that invariably erupts in explosive laughter and nightmare anxiety. A rhinoceros suddenly appears in a small town, tramping through its peaceful streets. Soon there are two, then three, until the “movement” is universal: a transformation of average citizens into beasts, as they learn to move with the times. Finally, only one man remains. “I’m the last man left, and I’m staying that way until the end. I’m not capitulating!”

The leading figure of absurdist theater and one of the great innovators of the modern stage, Eugene Ionesco did not write his first play, The Bald Soprano, until 1950. He went on to become an internationally renowned master of modern drama, famous for the comic proportions and bizarre effects that allow his work to be simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound.

Exit the King is a highly stylized, ritualized death rite unfolding the final hours of the once-great king Berenger the First. As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young emigrate, the seasons change overnight, and his kingdom’s borders shrink to the outline of his throne. At last, as the curtain falls, the king himself dissolves into a gray mist.

The author of such modern classics as The Bald Soprano, Exit the King, Rhinoceros, and The Chairs, Eugène Ionesco is “one of the most important and influential figures in the modern theater” (Library Journal). This crucial collection combines The New Tenant with Amédée and Victims of Duty—the plays Richard Gilman has called, along with The Killer, Ionesco’s “greatest plays, works of the same solidity, fulness, and permanence as [those of] his predecessors in the dramatic revolution that began with Ibsen and is still going on.”

Often called the father of the Theater of the Absurd, Eugène Ionesco wrote groundbreaking plays that are simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. Now his classic one acts The Bald Soprano and The Lesson are available in an exciting new translation by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tina Howe, noted heir of Ionesco’s absurdist vision, acclaimed by Frank Rich as “one of the smartest playwrights we have.” In The Bald Soprano Ionesco throws together a cast of characters including the quintessential British middle-class family the Smiths, their guests the Martins, their maid Mary, and a fire chief determined to extinguish all fires — including their hearths. It’s an archetypical absurdist tale and Ionesco displays his profound take on the problems inherent in modern communication. The Lesson illustrates Ionesco’s comic genius, where insanity and farce collide as a professor becomes increasingly frustrated with his hapless student, and the student with his mad teacher.