The less said about "The Chairs", the better-not because it isn't good but because it is. Eugene Ionesco's play gets a superlative production at Court Theatre, but like most existentialist comedy-drama it won't tolerate too much description. If Waiting for Godot is famously a play where "nothing happens-twice," The Chairs is a play where the characters give a party and nobody comes. But, like a dress you hardly notice on the hanger, The Chairs simply needs to be put on by the right person and suddenly it's a knockout.
Guest director Martin Platt is that right person, managing to overcome the play's weaknesses while enhancing its strengths. The opening 20 minutes are tough, as Ionesco presents what appears to be a retread of Beckett: an Old Man and an Old Woman seated in a wasteland and getting on each other's nerves (Nagg and Nell in Endgame), waiting for the arrival of someone important and mysteriously delayed (Godot). Platt gives this derivative section some momentum with bits that are sharply directed and performed: the Old Man tenderly takes the Old Woman's hand and promptly smashes to smithereens the record she's holding; the Old Woman flinches, resigns herself with a sigh, fumbles for another record and plays-the same song. But the evening really takes off once these homages are out of the way, freeing Ionesco (and Platt) to present his own vision, one that critiques movement as well as paralysis, companionship as well as loneliness, the importance of having something to say as well as the importance of being heard. All these serious points emerge from the comic action, the arrival and arrangement of the eponymous chairs and the guests who occupy them. These are important guests-a judge, the Old Man's ex-lover, even the Emperor-all waiting impatiently for the Old Man's long-promised revelation, and all invisible and inaudible to anyone but the couple onstage.
With a tip of the hat to door-slamming farce, Platt sends Hollis Resnik, as the Old Woman, chasing in and out of doors on two levels of set in response to the seemingly endless demand for furniture. Resnik handles this physical comedy with spectacular ease and panache, regularly reappearing from somewhere she could not possibly have gotten to in her few beats out of sight. Scenic designer Geoffrey Curley's blood-red set with its blind windows suggests both a lesser circle in Hell and the belly of the beast (complete with water leak), and at the same time handles perfectly the physical demands of the play, a test many beautiful designs fail. Lindsay Jones's sound design, too, is essential to the comic frenzy.
As the Old Man, Jeff Still captures every man who ever imagined himself a leader and then discovered he had no idea where he wanted to go. (Resnik's Old Woman is likewise every woman who tried to lead her husband's life instead of her own.) He makes the Old Man's awkwardness, especially his laborious walk, into a metaphor: for fear of responsibility, uncertainty about direction, the desperate desire to have the cup pass his lips-a Christ figure, though an unlikely one. Still previously showed his comic skills in a long run of the commercial play Hellcab; here, he reminds us that all comedy has something dead serious at the core.
Resnik built her reputation as an actress in musicals, and her marvelously flexible voice serves her well in portraying the Old Woman's mercurial moods. It also enables her to clearly distinguish the multiple roles the Old Woman feels called upon to play: nursemaid, boss, child, companion to the Old Man; hostess, lover, social arbiter to the imaginary hordes.
The play's ending contains two twists, things surprising even in the context of a bizarre situation in which predictability is unthinkable. They shouldn't be revealed, because this is an old-fashioned play first and foremost, one that keeps you guessing what's going to happen. At the same time, it's a thoroughly modern post-apocalyptic nightmare, and what makes it modern is that when it's all over you're still guessing.