Cutting Ball Theater’s current staging of mid-20th-century French playwright Eugene Ionesco’s “The Chairs” is probably one of the best theater of the absurd productions to be seen locally — ever.The almost-entirely-two-character tragic farce, or farcical tragedy, is blessed with numerous advantages: A new translation by artistic director Rob Melrose, who turned some of Ionesco’s nonsensical French wordplay into equally nonsensical English-language wordplay.
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“It’s all a little complicated,” says the Old Man (James Carpenter) to the Student (Carl Holvick-Thomas) in the first of three scenes that compose August Strindberg’s 1907 “The Ghost Sonata,” now at Cutting Ball Theater.
The Old Man is alluding to the interwoven and torturous relationships among the inhabitants of a mansion whose facade stretches across the shallow stage in designer Michael Locher’s effective, moveable set.
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We’ve come to expect rare revivals of 20th-century plays, original translations from the French and new, experimental works from Cutting Ball Theater, and the small company’s latest effort does not disappoint.
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In “Intermission” — the one-act in the middle of Cutting Ball Theater’s evening of three short plays by New York experimental playwright Will Eno — two couples, one young and the other middle-aged, sit upstage facing the audience. It is intermission in the play they’re watching — about a man dying — and, although strangers, the two couples begin making polite conversation.
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With more than 300 theater companies in the Bay Area, surviving, let alone thriving in a tough economy, one that’s been particularly hard on arts organizations, is an accomplishment. Cutting Ball Theater has managed to do that, and marks its 10th anniversary with a “10.10.10” gala Sunday.
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