Paris theatre shares secrets of staging same play for record-breaking 67 years

The Bald Soprano, the debut play by Romanian-French avant-gardist Eugène Ionesco, has been running in a tiny venue in Paris's Latin Quarter for a record 67 years. RFI looks at what's behind its staying power – and what it's like for the theatre's unique 45-member company, some of whom have been performing the same absurdist roles for decades.

When La Cantatrice Chauve (The Bald Soprano) premiered at Paris's Theatre de la Huchette in May 1957, a well-known critic at Le Figaro newspaper announced it would “drive audiences away from theatre”. 

He was wrong. On 2 March this year, just ahead of the 30th anniversary of the author's death in Paris, the theatre celebrated the play's 20,000th performance. More than two million spectators have settled into its 85 red-velvet seats since it began.

Teamed up with another short Ionesco play, La Leçon (The Lesson), the two works have been running five nights a week at that same theatre for 67 years, interrupted only by the 2020 Covid pandemic.

“We've had two shows since 1957, it's a world record of representations in the same theatre,” la Huchette's director Franck Desmedt says proudly in his poster-lined basement office below the stage.

“It's a unique story. We have 45 actors and it's the last [private] theatre to have a permanent troupe. This theatre is very rich because of those people. It's like a family.”

Didier Bailly became part of the family 38 years ago. “Joining the Theatre de la Huchette is like joining a religion,” he laughs.

Family members are all shareholders in the theatre.

“I feel very privileged to be part of this company,” says actor Hélène Cohen, who joined “between 30 to 40 years ago”. 

“It's more difficult for us than male actors – there are fewer roles for older women, so we're lucky to be in the troupe and to be able to carry on in the profession.”

Listen to a report at the Theatre de la Huchette on the Spotlight on France podcast:

The same old, popular show

The Bald Soprano is set in England in the late 19th century, in the home of the Smiths, who after 20 years of marriage have nothing left to say to one another.

It begins with the clock chiming 17 times.
“Oh, it's 9 o'clock,” says Mrs Smith, setting off a string of ever more nonsensical dialogue and non sequiturs, as she darns socks and Mr Smith buries his head in The Financial Times to ignore her, smoking a pipe and clicking his tongue.

They fill an empty space with empty words, twisting the conventions both of theatre and polite society.

The Martins, another couple who no longer recognise one another, join them for dinner. A maid comes in and out, is murdered; a fireman dressed as a policeman pops by “looking for fire”.

There is silence, followed by a lot of shouting, but no plot as such. 

Ionesco called it an “anti-play”. When asked what he meant by it all, he replied “absolutely nothing” – but “a superior nothing”.

When the piece was first performed in 1950, audiences were not ready for such absurdity and it closed after only 25 performances.

But when Nicolas Bataille and Marcel Cuvelier, Theatre de la Huchette's avant-garde directors, took a gamble on Ionesco in 1957, it gradually found a home, and an audience.

Bataille had the idea of acting it deadpan rather than playing for laughs, Bailly explains. “It's the contrast that brings out the black humour.”

Meanwhile Jacques Noël's set design also broke the codes of the time in privileging the colour green – considered bad luck in French theatre.

Keeping it real

La Huchette has stuck religiously to Bataille's original staging and Noël's set design. That's part of its charm, but acting in a time warp seems like it might get old.

“Not at all!”, laughs Cohen, who is currently playing the role of Mrs Martin, having started out aged 20 playing the pupil in The Lesson.

“We never stick with the same partner, that's what's great. It means you have to keep adapting. There are always surprises.”

The 45 members of the company also work intermittently, around two weeks every two months.

“The rest of the time we work on other projects so it's stimulating. When you come back to the role you're no longer the same person,” Cohen adds.

Bailly runs a weekly rehearsal for those picking up after a break to keep performances fresh and fine-tuned. There might be the odd tweak to a gesture, but given Bataille's stage direction was so precise, there's no question of improvising.

“Sometimes you think it's a good idea to bring this or that, but more often than not it isn't,” he says cheekily.

A play for our time

The Bald Soprano's staying power is largely due to the “fantastic” text, Bailly believes. 

Couples still struggle to communicate, and social media has arguably sped up the breakdown in communication. Meanwhile politicians, trapped in the jargon of communications, struggle to interact meaningfully with the public.

The play was written just four years after World War II, Bailly points out, so with a background of “fear for order, authority but also of fascism”.

Bernard the fireman, dressed in a Gestapo-inspired black leather coat, has a key role in the play.

“He comes to ask them if they've hidden fire, but you can hear: 'are you hiding Jews, or drugs?'”, Bailly says.

“It's eternal, the fear of fascism. And now, when in Europe there's the shadow of the extreme-right political parties coming, it's still relevant.”

Neither bald nor soprano 

Desmedt first saw the play when he was six years old and people like him who've grown up with it now make up around a third of the audience, often returning with their children or grandchildren.

Then there are tourists intrigued to see the original production, and schoolkids studying the play.

“We've been studying it in English but my teacher said I absolutely had to see the original version,” says Sophia-Rose, a drama student over from the UK.

“I love it, the fact it doesn't makes sense, makes sense to me. And seeing it in the original and thinking about all those actors playing in this little theatre and the people who've kept it going over all those years is really special.”

To encourage foreign audiences, subtitles in English were recently introduced on Wednesdays, and they'll become a daily feature during the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.

It's useful, but can be a bit disconcerting since “the audience tend to look up to read rather than watching the actors”, Bailly notes.

Perhaps Ionesco would have approved; it's all part of the unpredictability of live theatre.

Sometimes the company have added their own absurdist touches, like exchanging gender roles with their onstage spouses.

“I played Mrs Smith but not as a drag queen, only the costume, no make-up or wig,” says Bailly.

“It was a dream! I was a bald Mrs Smith. And she was not a soprano!”

That's altogether appropriate: there never has been a soprano, bald or otherwise, in Ionesco's play anyway.

This story appeared on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 110.