30 PLAYS IN 30 DAYS: Play #25 "Hunger and Thirst" by Eugene Ionesco

 I have decided for the month of September to read 30 plays in 30 days. It is my belief that, if possible, a play should be read in one sitting to get a better inherent sense of the dramatic arc. Each day, I will write a short post here about the play of the day.

Play #25

Hunger and Thirst by Eugene Ionesco

I have mentioned my abiding love of the Theatre of the Absurd before on many occasions, and when it comes to writers I am fascinated by, Eugene Ionesco is near the top of the list. While I certainly am a fan of works like Rhinoceros, Exit the King, The Killer, The Bald Soprano (an anti-play) and others, it was some of his shorter plays like The Chairs and Jack or the Submission that really turned me on and blew my mind by their creativity. Ionesco's influence is huge, no doubt. Just read Albee's The American Dream and The Sandbox--- they are practically overflowing with Ionesco's influence.

Hunger and Thirst is labelled as 3 episodes. The first, called "The Flight", finds Jean dissatisfied at his new home with his wife Marie-Madeleine and their small baby in a cradle. As much as his wife adores him and comforts him, he feels a lack. There is a strange (it is Ionesco after all) visit from an Aunt who may or may not be dead (you can see in scenes like this how Ionesco also influenced comic writers like Christopher Durang), and after, Jean plays a prolonged gamed of hide and seek with his wife before disappearing altogether. And while she honestly believes that he cannot tear out his love from his heart, he does so, symbolically, in order to set out for something different. 

Episode 2, "The Rendezvous" finds Jean at a gorgeous mountain top museum, waiting to meet a woman, who may in fact just be some idealized version of something that does not exist. He waits and waits, while the two museum keepers look on him. In this episode, one might be able to see how Beckett influenced Ionesco... Ionesco, in the one interview I could find with him that was subtitled, talked about his love for Beckett's work. 

Episode 3, "The Black Masses of the Good Inn" finds Jean taking rest at an Inn (or is it a monastery?). The "brothers" who work their keep filling his plates and his drink-- and he keeps eating and drinking, never sated, a physical literal representation of his dissatisfaction in the first episode. The brothers then put on a show for him, which, in truth, goes on a bit too long and becomes a little tedious, though the message is strong--- it demonstrates belief as a kind of conformity, or, perhaps, conformity as a means to being fed. After the play, Jean finds himself in Inn (or monastery's) debt, though he sees visions of his wife and daughter, the baby girl now 15, waiting for him. Though he wants nothing more than to at last go home, it is time for him to feed others. 

There is much to be admired in this play (though I do think a good 5 pages could be cut from the final episode), and I underlined a great deal of it. The ending is powerful, and, as usual, Ionesco reveals some frightening truths in a manner both dark and comedic all at the same time. 

I thought it was brilliant.