Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs

If Groucho Marx were a brooding existentialist French playwright, he’d be Eugene Ionesco, creator of the Theater of the Absurd. In fact, Ionesco was much influenced by Groucho’s anarchic spirit and irrepressible verbal dynamism, although Ionesco’s creations were far more surreal, not to mention darker and nihilistic. It’s surprising how much humor there is to be had in the theme that life is ultimately pointless, hopeless, and empty. (We know it’s always a hit when we bring the subject up at parties.) The Chairs follows an aging couple, unhappily married for 75 years and growing more decrepit by the day, who hire an orator to help them pass on their collected wisdom to younger generations, so they can die in peace. The audience they hope for never seems to arrive, but the room fills up with an ever-increasing amount of empty chairs. Echoing this total failure to communicate, the never-named man and woman are growing further apart from each other as senility makes him lose touch with the past and her with the present. This is heavy stuff, shot through with humor caustic enough to eat through sheet-metal. This production is directed by Daniel Aukin, on loan to the Guthrie Lab from New York experimental theater Soho Rep. Guthrie Lab, (612) 347-1100, www.guthrietheater.org