by Eugene Ionesco
Translated by Donald Watson
with Raymond Huntley and Patricia Heneghan
Produced by R. D. Smith
(Third broadcast)

'The Lesson' and 'The Bald Prima Donna' marked the emergence in the 'fifties of the 'Theatre of the Absurd.' But the Absurd, however funny, is by no means nonsense; it is the counterchange of the Commonplace - and lonesco's serious purpose is to expose the bondage and even the menace of the commonplace. Above all, he wants us to realise how far we are beset by the cliches of the language in which we commonly converse and the tyranny to which we are subjected, like the pupil in 'The Lesson,' when language is used as a weapon of domination-or perhaps only of mass-persuasion.