The Chairs | Review of a 1998 Revival of Ionesco's Play
Lahr reviews a 1998 revival of Ionesco’s play
in this essay. The critic offers a highly favorable
appraisal of the play, labeling it as one of the great
dramatic pieces of the twentieth century.
Once, contemplating the survival of his plays, the French-Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco said, ‘‘It takes a few decades for a work to become brilliant—when it’s no longer written by the author, but rewritten by the generations who come after him.’’ Britain’s Théâtre de Complicité has restaged Ionesco’s one-act The Chairs nearly half a century after it was written, in 1952, and has established finally and forever the indubitable poetry and genius of the play, which Ionesco subtitled ‘‘a tragic farce.’’ Here, at the Golden, superbly directed by Simon...
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