AK09 review: The Chairs at the Maidment Theatre

The Chairs/ Les Chaises
Musgrove Studio, Maidment Theatre
Until March 28 (in French, March 17-22)

Amusingly, in a touch I like to think of as deliberate, the programme notes for The Chairs announce that the piece is an example of the Theatre of the "Absurb" [subs: crrt]. Playwright Eugène Ionesco was Romania's equivalent to Samuel Beckett and their work shares a playful style and stark message: we'll never find the meaning to life even if one exists – all we have is each other.

In other hands, this could be tiresomely portentous, cold or simply depressing. Happily, however, with this small show, Michael Laurence and (potent pause) productions [ brackets and lower case crrt] continue their habit of staging plays – often stylised European classics that might otherwise be forgotten - in engaging and accessible ways.

George Tudor's direction throws in a little slapstick, and Laurence as the old man gives lines such as "I'm so tired of everything" an air of comic and endearing hyperbole, because he's showing off for his wife's benefit. His wife, played fittingly skittishly by Cristina Ionda is the man's eager audience, helpmate and faithful echo, and they fondly bicker their way through the play.

Showing off being a favourite hobby of theirs, the couple dress to impress, and gradually fill the otherwise relatively realistic set with a vast forest of chairs for a throng of invisible, chaotic guests, invited to the man's all-important "lecture on science". Unlike Godot, the lecture's Orator (Denise Snoad) does finally turn up, taking the whole venture to a new level of ridiculousness.

Earlier, the tables are cunningly turned – or rather, the chairs are – on the audience, so that our seats become an extension of the couple's collection of chairs. As with Beckett's work, The Chairs invites myriad interpretations; and if the chair occupants on stage are figments of the fictional couple's imagination, then we, the audience, could be too. Absurb? Perhaps – but what isn't? That's the point, and The Chairs makes it very well.