Fascism, Fury, Fear and Farce

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

WHEN ASKED TO MUSE ON THE avant-garde of the generation before his own, the man who became perhaps the most influential avant-garde dramatist of the 20th century savored the historical irony. "They all wanted to destroy culture," he said, "and now they're part of our heritage." The same thing happened to the father of "theater of the absurd" (he preferred the label theater of derision, saying, "It's not a certain society that seems ridiculous to me, it's mankind"). In 1950, Eugene Ionesco's The Bald Soprano opened in Paris to catcalls, and a performance of his The Lesson ended with the lead actor bolting out ahead of angry spectators. But seven years later, a Paris theater produced a double bill of the two plays; they are still running today after nearly 12,000 performances. By 1970 the Romanian-born Ionesco had been elected to the pantheon of tradition, the Academie Francaise. His death at 84 was announced last week by France's Ministry of Culture rather than by his wife of 58 years, Rodica, or their daughter.

At his peak in the early 1960s, Ionesco attracted such collaborators as Jean-Louis Barrault, who magically staged A Stroll in the Air; Laurence Olivier and Zero Mostel, who both played the lead in Rhinoceros (with Mostel winning a Tony Award on Broadway); and Alec Guinness, who starred in Exit the King, a Lear-like portrait of the inevitability of death. Ionesco was hailed as someone who might bridge the gap between literature and entertainment. Instead, his work grew more remote and austere, and his audiences dwindled. His last play, Journeys Among the Dead, was withdrawn before opening in New York City.

Ionesco's work was often likened to Samuel Beckett's. In The Chairs, for example, an old couple at a lighthouse fill a room with chairs to prepare for an orator who turns out to speak only by growling. Most of Ionesco's works were funnier than Beckett's, more verbal, richer in farcical action and far less despairing. In Soprano, mock-philosophical discussion shaded into nonsense. The Lesson, a portrait of a megalomaniacal teacher, reflected dark satire of the powerful. Rhinoceros blended those themes with a manic physical portrait of a city where everyone turns into a rampaging beast. This eccentric mix of humor and horror, of prattle and inarticulate profundity, influenced writers from Tom Stoppard to Edward Albee. The plays are widely taught at colleges and high schools and probably helped shape the surrealist sensibility of much contemporary TV comedy.

While America gave Rhinoceros its warmest reception anywhere, critics and audiences seemed to misunderstand it as light comedy. To Ionesco, it was a brutal metaphor for what happened in Romania under fascism and communism. In a journal dated "around 1940," he wrote, "The police are rhinoceroses. The judges are rhinoceroses. You are the only man among the rhinoceroses. The rhinoceroses wonder how the world could have been led by men. You yourself wonder: Is it true that the world was led by men?" The horror behind this question never left. Ionesco's jokes were those of nearly all the 20th century avant-garde -- a whistling in the graveyard.