Review: The Lesson

Eugene Ionesco wrote the comedic head-scratcher The Lesson in 1950 and for all the time that’s passed its strangeness remains undiminished. The nice but dim Pupil (Julia Gregg) attends the private tuition of the increasingly creepy Professor (Tomasz Hollanek). The lesson begins as disconcertingly simple, ‘What is one plus one?’ and soon descends into utter nonsense. ‘He pronounced filly as filly,’ the Professor proclaims in indignation. However, the strangest thing about Katie Scott’s production was not the script, but how uninvolving it turned out to be. Certain fine moments and promising aspects were swamped ultimately by a lack of momentum and obviously under-rehearsed performances.

The play is largely a two hander with the occasional interruption of Catriona Scott’s Maid. The play’s dialogue is fraught with complexity, containing a mixture of rapid fire exchange, bizarre non-sequiturs and bewildering repetitions. It demands the highest of its actors and this proved to be a demand too far. The character of the Professor is meant to be slick, motor-mouthed and completely in control, however Hollanek struggled to convey any of these. The problem included, but was not limited to, the fact that he simply did not know his lines. One particularly painful moment saw him stop and stare at someone holding a script in the front row. The subsequent prompt killed any sense of atmosphere the play had built up and left Hollanek playing catch up for the rest of his performance. However, there were times when he did somewhat redeem himself. In the more sexually insidious moments of the play, when he promises to nibble on the Pupil’s ears, he was as slimy as a bucketful of eels. In an enjoyable way.

Gregg was stronger. Her gentle naïveté was highly enjoyable and she seemed to have a good grasp of the tone of the play. Her smiles were always a little too big and her complaints were always a little too whiny; she was so close to being recognisable, yet so implacably strange. Her moments of confidence, as when she plumped herself into the Professor’s chair, were a delight. However, her performance seemed to deteriorate as the play progressed. Her sudden onset of toothache, a random pain that the Professor treats with frightening indifference, was simply unconvincing.

Scott’s performance, though overly mannered at times, was very charming. Her scene at the end, where absurdity is poured over the play’s violent climax like icing on a cake, was undoubtedly funny. At this point, Hollanek and Scott each managed to pull off some rather fine jokes, caught somewhere between remorse and mischief.

Some of the directing decisions, it needs to be said, were mixed. The set was thoughtfully decorated and the lighting changes were effective (although the speed of the changes was distracting). However, Scott seemed to have imposed some distracting alterations to the script without following through with them. Place names had been Anglicized (Bordeaux became Edinburgh, Paris became London), yet the script retained kept such French affectations as ‘Mademoiselle.’ It seemed as if the play had aimed to take off from France head straight for England, only to have landed somewhere in the middle of the Channel.

In the final scene of the play the Professor stabs the Pupil to death. Curiously, the production decided not to use a knife here, prop or otherwise, but rather just to mime holding a knife as if it would have the same impact. What it did however was create an unwitting metaphor for the play; one could clearly see the intention and admired it, but it was lacking in sharpness and never threatened to draw blood.