An ancient couple busily prepare for a major occasion. They have been married for seventy-five years, but she still enjoys hearing his old stories. Their conversation seems mildly eccentric, but as an increasing number of chairs are brought on stage for the invisible visitors, the dialogue and its effect on the couple, particularly the wife, become more bizarre by the second. Intent on passing on his great message, the old man has engaged a professional orator for the task. This third "real" character duly appears; the old couple commit suicide, the chairs remain empty and the orator is dumb. Written in 1951, this frenetic tragi-farce was Ionesco's third play to be staged. Complex, ambiguous, technically adriot and multi-dimensional, it is one of the enduring masterpieces of European Absurdist Theatre. Seldom has human futility been explored with such hilarious and poignant results.
