“The Bald Soprano” at the National Theater Stage

The first staging of Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano” was a big hit. That’s the reason why director Spiro Duni decided to stage again for the Albanian public this masterpiece of the theater of the absurd. The show is put on stage due to the collaboration of theatrical studio “Po” and the National Theater.
The Bald Soprano appears to have been written as a continuous loop. The final scene contains stage instructions to start the performance over from the very beginning, with the Martin couple substituted for the Smith couple and vice versa. However, this decision was only added in after the show’s hundredth premier, for it was originally for the Smiths to restart the show, in the exact same manner as before. According to Ionesco, he had several possible endings in mind, including a climax in which the “author” or “manager” antagonizes the audience, and even a version in which the audience would be shot with machine guns. However this was ultimately settled for a cheaper solution, the cycle. Ionesco told in an interview, that he wanted to give a meaning to the play by having it begin all over again with two characters. In this way the end becomes a new beginning but, since there are two couples in the play, it begins the first time with the Smiths and the second time with the Martins, to suggest the interchangeable nature of the characters: the Smiths are the Martins and the Martins are the Smiths.