Today, Rich Brown hopes to give people a lesson, if they are brave enough to accept the tutelage. Instead of a lecture hall, the Pocket Playhouse becomes an educational institution with Brown’s interpretation of “The Lesson,” a play by Eugene Ionesco. The show will challenge and confuse audiences, but the experience is well worth it.
The play was written in 1950 by “the father of absurdism,” but shows no signs of being dated. The story is about a respected professor giving a first lesson to his newest pupil. As the Professor continues the instruction, he gets progressively more aggressive and frightening, a far cry from the feeble man he is at the beginning. The Professor feeds his ego off the domination of his Pupil’s inferior knowledge. The funnier moments in the play take place over his instruction of subtraction, a theory that the Pupil cannot understand.
His maid, Marie, warns him that if he continues with the lesson it will end in calamity, but her statements are more suggestive than warning. From mathematics the Professor moves to linguistics, where he lectures on and on in an incomprehensible way. The Professor builds and builds while the Pupil grows weaker with the physical manifestation of a toothache. All the while, Marie is watching in the shadows.
Brown has added a second influential force that Ionesco never intended, and it becomes a vital part of the production. It takes the form of a man with a saxophone who manipulates all the characters with his melodies like a jazzy pied piper. The music is all improvised by local musician Skip Moses, and it gives the play a more up-to-date feeling while adding visually and audibly to the absurdity of the text.
Anyone who is interested in theater, language or culture must go see this play. It is a shame that it is only running three days. The experience of this play is one that I have never had in theater and the University is lucky to have it offered in the Pocket. Quinn Mattfeld gives an astonishing performance as the Professor making the audience endear and fear him, all in under 90 minutes. I would like to see him nominated for best actor in the annual Pocket Playhouse awards, the Shankies. Mattfeld’s physical and vocal interpretations of the character’s metamorphosis are so subtle that the audience is almost lead along like one of his pupils.
Amanda Dumler and Sarah Turnquist play wonderful complements as the Pupil and Marie. Dumler fills the role of the naive student and her endurance of the lesson is at times painful to watch. Turnquist shows the most malevolence in the show playing a character who seems to jump in and out of existence at will.
Once again: Go see this play. It may be a while before a play like this is performed in the Eugene area again, and it may be even longer before it is done so well.
“The Lesson” runs today, Friday and Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Pocket Playhouse in Villard hall. There is a $1 suggested donation.