THE BALD SOPRANO is a play about the peculiarity of English life, English fires, English food, English chairs, English socks, English men and women – everything English – all of it shocking upon first encounter. After the Second World War, Romanian Eugene Ionesco began studying English while living in France and wrote a play about the experience. He noticed how autistic, even catatonic, phrasebook-English speakers appeared. He seemed to feel lost without his native language and French – continental languages that entwine reality, while English boxes it. Perhaps he feared the world was growing more English day by day. The Bald Soprano was inspired by culture shock.

The Gleams Theatre’s recent production of the play, directed by Bulgarian-born Constantin Sokolov, took these themes a few steps further. An introductory sequence included a haunting monologue from Ionesco’s The Chairs, followed by a sequence in which the actors announced there would not be a play because the theatre was empty. Actors/ushers ordered the audience to get up and move to the other side of the room. Without a word, everyone co-operated, exchanging worried glances. Were we invisible, or slated for ethnic cleansing? Did these people know what they were doing? Was it a play? or something else? Should we have left immediately to avoid further embarrassment?

The cattle re-seated, the play began: a scene in London, a couple, seated in chairs, the husband doing a crossword puzzle, the wife darning socks. We knew they were English by their accents, although their cell phones kept ringing, forcing them to switch to their real-life personas before becoming British again. These improvised interruptions helped emphasize the awkwardness and absurdity of the play.

Inevitably the wooden English characters and their absurd dialogues became nearly comprehensible, and by Act Two, we were almost interested in their ’story’ – which goes to show it is practically impossible to write something meaningless. Despite our best efforts to eliminate meaning, meaning creeps into everything. Time and habit create the illusion of familiarity and repetition builds suspense – even as Big Ben chimed 17 times whenever it pleased. Characters moved like mechanical toys, changing chairs with neither rhyme nor reason; nevertheless, before long, they seemed almost alive and we began to care what would happen next.

Somewhere between tension and total boredom, we awaited the grand finale: nonsensical lines shouted into space by maniacal robots on amphetamines. As a reflection of our collective post-traumatic stress syndrome, this play was strangely satisfying.

Gleams Theatre was formed in Montreal five years ago. The founders, Ira and Constantin Sokolov, arrived here from Bulgaria in 1994, after living and performing in Switzerland, Germany, Norway and Lithuania. Last year they put on a series of “10-minute plays” at Diamond Bookstore in Westmount. I saw one of these and found it excellent and refreshing. With an eye to European trends, Gleams fills a neglected niche in Montreal. They subscribe to a Brechtian tradition of doing theatre on a shoestring, wherever they can find a suitable space.

Their next production (scheduled for spring) will be a double header: Riverside Drive by Woody Allen, and a mystery play, to be announced.

A glimpse of the performance can be found on their Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=50414375559&oid=25927482098

ILLUSTRATION: The Bald Soprano, mixed media collage by Fiona Ackerman www.fionaackerman.com