Theatre review: The Chairs

A rare appearance for Eugène Ionesco's absurdist work in a major London production - only the second in the decade I've been writing this blog - also features a more regular sight as Kathryn Hunter appears with husband and regular collaborator Marcello Magni in the first of two planned productions this year. At the Almeida Omar Elerian directs his own adaptation of Ionesco's The Chairs, and for the second show in a row here a revival gives an opportunity to address very modern concerns about climate change, as an impossibly elderly couple watch the world flood outside their windows, and remember a time when everything seemed brighter. But the Old Man (Magni) has a plan: He's been a janitor, or Master of the Mop and Bucket, all his life, but in his spare time he's been preparing and perfecting a speech that holds all the solutions to the world's problems. He doesn't feel able to deliver the message in front of an audience himself, but fortunately he's found a professional Speaker who can do it..

He and the Old Woman (Hunter) have invited all the most important people to their home to hear this speech, and when they do they're confident that the plan will be put into action. But first the Speaker has to turn up.

Meanwhile the guests are arriving, and the couple rush around finding chairs for them all to sit on. With the Speaker still not having arrived, they're overwhelmed in their own home by a steady flow of dignitaries and celebrities, who are getting increasingly irritable about the delay. This sets up the opportunity for a tour de force of physical comedy from Hunter and Magni, as the guests are all invisible - only the chairs and their own performances can represent the growing crowd of influencers fending off randy military officers, and old flames putting temptation in the way of the pair's 75-year marriage.

The interpretation could of course be that the guests are all entirely in the couple's head, and their running around looking after them is simply a continuation of the routine they began the evening with, retelling each other the stories of their lives. But Cécile Trémolières and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen's design, all layers of draped, faded curtains like stages within stages, signals that Elerian's production is in many ways theatre about theatre: The two actors' creation of a rowdy crowd out of a circle of wooden chairs is where our attention is drawn, and there's other little nods to artifice creating a vivid reality: A prop cup and saucer only being used for sound effects while the action is mimed, while Toby Sedgwick, who's meant to be turning up as the Speaker at the very end, keeps getting roped into stage management jobs to support their performances, ultimately making him miss his own big moment.

And drawing our attention to the performances is the right move when they're from veteran physical performers like this: Decades of personal and working relationships means they work well together but inevitably Magni can't quite share the spotlight equally with Hunter, who's as hard to take your eyes off as ever. More doll-like than ever, her Old Woman scuttles around the stage stacking chairs helpfully, but her face speaks volumes undermining her apparently unswerving support of her husband - and she's capable of going into full-on grotesquery, when the Old Woman starts flashing her petticoats at a handsome guest.

There's an undeniable darkness and sadness underneath everything but the comedy is where the focus is throughout, creating an evening as entertaining as it is mysterious. With dramatic music choices by sound designers Elena Peña and Pete Malkin, things build to a crescendo as the revolve begins to spin the chairs around, creating the frenzy of guests the couple get lost in. Absurdist theatre can be hard enough to interpret even if you know the full context in which it debuted, and Elerian's adaptation, which is happy to take a few liberties with the story, acknowledges the problems of finding new relevance to a 1950s play in an epilogue from Sedgwick. It's a nice idea but it's allowed to go on way too long, turning metatheatricality into over-explaining, and ending a frantically entertaining evening on a damp squib. A few indulgences like this aside though, The Chairs is a memorably surreal journey into worlds that are and worlds that might have been.

The Chairs by Eugène Ionesco in a version by Omar Elerian is booking until the 5th of March at the Almeida Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.