The Ionesco show

In the backroom of a café on the boulevard Saint-Michel a group of actors seated around a table roar with laughter. Nicholas Bataille, a young director, reads aloud the first scenes of a play by the young playwright Eugene Ionesco.

A couple that has nothing left to say to say to each other after twenty years of marriage spends the evening with another couple that no longer recognize each other.

The text has already been submitted to Bernard Grasset who thinks it is no good and has been refused by the Comédie Française. These first scenes were drafted by Ionesco after trying to learn English from the Assimil method called English without toil. In the readymade phrases aligned one after the other he saw an inconsistency in language which became the inspiration for his play. From the beginning this admirer of Lewis Carroll and other surrealists knew he wanted to make his play a parody of theatre.

Nicolas Bataille sets the pages back on the table. All at once Simone Mozet, Odette Barrois, Paulette Frantz, and Claude Mansard cry out,

"We have to do it!»
«But it’s too short…»someone says.
«It needs a new title»,
declares another.
Nicolas Bataille quickly arranges a meeting with Ionesco.
«I want to stage your play.»
«Really? Are you out of your mind? Everyone has told me it’s impossible to perform.»
«We want to do it."

Rehearsals last nearly five months. One day, a stockbroker acquainted with Ionesco invites the troupe to perform the play in the sitting room of his Parisian townhouse near the Champ-de-Mars. They perform the play as a comedy. The presentation is an immense disappointment to the audience as well as the actors. “Why doesn’t it work?” the young director asks himself. His partner Akakia Viala suggests that instead, they play against the text and perform it dramatically. Bataille takes this idea and improves on it. The senseless text performed solemnly and ceremoniously becomes compelling. Filled with references to Jules Verne, Bataille found unsettling similarities in the language and attitudes of the novelist’s and the playwright’s characters. Ionesco attends all the rehearsals and with the troupe he thinks on a new title for his play. It comes from a slip of the tongue of the actor Jacques-Henri Huet playing the pompous fireman. During his Rhume monologue he replaces the ‘blonde schoolteacher’ with a ‘bald soprano’. When Ionesco hears this he jumps out of his seat and declares, “That’s it!”

The troupe obtains an audition at the Theatre des Noctambules. Managed since 1939 by a pair of theatre enthusiasts, Pierre Leuris and Jean Claude, this theatre became after a difficult beginning a Mecca for new, experimental genres of theatre.

"It’s marvellous, exclaims Pierre Leuris, the only problem is that it lasts only one hour! What do you expect me to do with one hour? Listen, I would like to put you in the schedule but at 6:00 pm. I have a show starting at 9:00 pm."

The time slot is mediocre but the troupe does not have a choice. Their scenery is made up of furniture borrowed from the actors’ parents and costumes borrowed from the film production of Occupe-toi d’Amelie (Keep an Eye on Amelie) directed by Claude Autant-Lara, a friend of Nicolas Bataille.

The play’s opening night is May 10, 1950 and the turnout is disappointing. Eugene Ionesco anxiously watches the performance in the wings. During the Smiths’ scene he hears laughter. “But…but they’re laughing,” he mummers to himself. It does not last.

The public’s reaction is mixed. Some even insult them, “Who are these fools! They’re mocking us!” However, intellectuals such as Camus, Breton, or Queneau are won over. The critics’ reviews are mixed as well. While some such as Jacques Lemarchand have only praise for the play others incinerate it without mercy. Jean-Baptiste Jeener will write, “Meanwhile the play is driving away the theatre’s audience.” The lack of an audience is what forces the play to close after only one month of performances.

The Ionesco Show had such an impact that tours quickly followed one after the other.

Over the years the troupe travels across the globe from France to Germany, the United States, Lebanon, Japan, Tunisia, etc…

They inspire famous artists such as the photographer William Klein or the graphic designer Massin. Many prominent film directors such as Louis Malle, Robert Enrico, and Jacques Tati cast in their films actors from the Théâtre de la Huchette.

Now in its 65th year the Ionesco Show continues to hold the world record for the show that has been played non-stop in the same theatre.
More than 19,500 performances have been put on and watched by over 2 million spectators.

In 1996 the Ionesco Show was honored with the grande Medaille de Vermeil and in 2000 it received an honorary Moliere Award.