IF YOUR theatre company has just been knifed by the powers that be, then there's no finer play to choose for what may be your farewell tour than Ionesco's 1961 classic The Lesson, revived by the Edinburgh-based Benchtours company following the recent
withdrawal of their Scottish Arts Council funding.
It remains a high-risk choice in at least two ways. Written in the intensely stagey absurdist style of the late-1950s avant-garde, the play can look severely dated; and it reflects the interest in non-naturalistic and stylised forms of drama that has characterised Benchtours' work over the last 17 years, and has tended to keep the company out of the theatrical mainstream.
Gerry Mulgrew's thoughtful new production, though, does just enough to maintain the play's reputation as a passionate and purposeful classic of 20th-century absurdist theatre. Set in the study of an old professor in a nameless French town, the play begins with an apparently benign encounter between the teacher and his private pupil, a bright young girl of 18; and then, through a series of increasingly ridiculous and horrifying tone-shifts, gradually exposes the bullying authoritarianism and sexual violence implicit in their interaction.
Peter Clerke and Catherine Gillard, of Benchtours, tend to try too hard as the professor and his conniving maidservant; when it comes to absurdist comedy, less is more. But Kirstin McLean, as the girl, brilliantly ventures into the grotesque without losing all traction on reality. Jason Southgate's slightly surreal, peach-toned library set is superb, Kevin McCallum's lighting and Tim Brinkhurst's sound are beautiful and sinister; and these sad echoes of a fast-receding normality help to ensure that although this show is hardly a pleasure to watch as it happens, it grows in the memory, rich and clear.
The full article contains 304 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
