THEATER REVIEW : ‘Bald Soprano’ Hits the High and the Low Notes

Eugene Ionesco, theater’s lyrical contortionist, aimed at several targets with his absurdist plays, but the pretense and hypocrisy of society were two of his favorites.

His writing often searched for the groin of humanity and, with a surrealist’s glee, tried to hit it with a firm kick. Not every effort reaches the mark, but many did.

One of the best is “The Bald Soprano,” a one-act that is both hilarious and sad in its reflection of Ionesco’s basic view of life as a pointless stew we are forced to gobble every day.

“Soprano,” which is given a confident performance by the Rancho Santiago College Professional Actors Conservatory, begins with Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Jim McLean and Kemi Lapite) sitting in their average suburban home having a painfully average conversation about nothing much.

She babbles on about this and that; he grunts or clucks every now and then and reads the evening newspaper with a fatalist’s appreciation of how rotten it’s all getting. Friends from the city are expected soon. Maybe they can bring something interesting into the humdrum.

When Mr. and Mrs. Martin (Brian Hickman and Suzanne Doherty) finally show, they are left briefly to amuse themselves, and Ionesco sets off on one of his most remarkable passages. Mr. and Mrs. Martin act like strangers meeting awkwardly for the first time at the home of mutual friends. They talk sheepishly, then more intimately, until they discover that they have been sleeping in the same bed for several years. There’s a shade of horror in their surprise. After they recover, they vow not to lose each other again.

As a comment on marriage it’s pretty devastating, but it also says much about our inability to really connect with anyone, even someone we think we love. If the experience of a deep emotion such as love is merely sleepwalking, what can we expect from everyday life?

Other scenes are just as pointed. Everyone tells jokes and little stories (the play’s title is from one of these anecdotes) that make no sense or are so banal they make your brain itch. But everybody laughs uproariously, not out of politeness but to maintain the illusion that their lives are exciting and full.

Because of its uninhibited abstraction, “Soprano” expects a lot from actors--expressions, gestures and inflections have to say even more than usual here. The PAC cast, under Jerry McGonigle’s direction, comes through. Lapite’s prim, proud and ultimately confused Mrs. Smith is the best interpretation, but everyone does justice to his or her character.

“The Lesson” (also directed by McGonigle) is not as important a one-act, but it does have a nails-scratching-the-blackboard edginess that can get to you. In this one, Ionesco rails against pedantry in the schools and, through projection, the amoral, destructive force of fascism.

We watch as an imbalanced professor (David Langdon) tutors a young student (Jana Webb) in the ABCs. It all starts off reasonably enough, but soon he’s berating her, then he’s losing control and then, in an ugly denouement, he cannot resist violence.

The performances here aren’t quite equal to those in “Soprano,” but Langdon does make the professor a frightening, all-too predictable little man.

‘THE BALD SOPRANO’ and ‘THE LESSON’

A Rancho Santiago College Professional Actors Conservatory production of Eugene Ionesco’s one-act plays. Directed by Jerry McGonigle. With Jim McLean, Kemi Lapite, Brian Hickman, Suzanne Doherty, Athena Rees, Sean P. Brown, David Langdon, Jana Webb and Lisa Foster. Sets by Thomas Buderwitz. Lighting by Dewey Douglas. Costumes by Bonnie Bowers. Sound by Michael Killen. Plays in repertory with Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” Sunday at 7 p.m., May 12 and 18 at 8 p.m. and May 14 at 7 p.m. at 13162 Newhope St., Garden Grove. Tickets: $5 to $7. (714) 638-3104.