An existential treat, as transposed from the 1950s to present day

You could almost call Eugene Ionesco’s 1952 absurdist farce typecasting, what with it featuring a married couple with decades together under their belts. The Romanian-born French playwright, whose mother was Jewish, could hardly have envisaged a husband and wife duo of physical theatre veterans with the dizzying performance skills, both verbal and physical, of Kathryn Hunter and Marcello Magni.

But then translator and director Omar Elerian also transposes the story to a challenged and conflicted contemporary world with a nod to the politics of Brexit. The message of Ionesco’s set-up, which has the couple precariously sat in a room surrounded by rising water, may not have been meant so literally as well as metaphorically, but again it works all too well right now.

The room in question is increasingly filled with wooden chairs of all shades. The couple is clearly expecting a crowd to hear an important message they purport to have to deliver. If this all sounds rather sobering, it could not be further from the truth. Elerian also draws on the fun of backstage comedy, starting with a great bit of business with a tannoy apparently left on accidentally so the audience can hear Magni’s Old Man suffering loudly from stage fright as Hunter’s Old Woman and director Elerian try to coax him on stage.

It’s not exactly a spoiler that they succeed and things start to move at a dizzying speed. Their doorbell rings repeatedly and an audience (invisible, though entirely believable) is admitted. Hunter’s ability to fling around chairs in mounting frenzy as she fires off volleys of urgent instructions is breathtaking and the underscoring of music and soprano voices that literally chime with the doorbell is as beautiful as it is clever (sound supervisor Bryony Blackler).

That the room is a set in an old fashioned theatre is evident from the swathes of dusty-looking velvet curtains in shades of orange and rust that drape the walls (set designers Cécile Trémolières and Naomi Kuyek-Cohen). Against these, Hunter – in a long black satin frock set off with red stockings and an exuberantly orange wig with girlish bunches – looks terrific and weirdly outrageous, especially as lit by Jackie Shemesh.

At intervals, Toby Sedgwick’s grumpy stage manager grounds the action back in that theatre. As Sedgwick, Hunter and Magni were all stalwarts of Complicité, the physical theatre company par excellence, the pace and rhythm of the action is seamless. There is even a bit of audience participation in the spirit of pantomime.

The frenzy of the action is tempered by a melancholy too. There is talk of death, of “your skin and my bones”, perhaps reflecting the age of the couple and the plight of the drowning world outside.

A real spoiler alert now – in fact they anticipate the arrival of a speaker and, not only does he actually turn up, although he was silent in Ionesco’s original, Elerian gives Sedgwick plenty to say. By this time the packed audience are united by laughter and delight that go a long way towards alleviating the existential angst of both Ionesco’s time and ours.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Helen Murray

The Chairs runs until Saturday 5 March. 7.30pm, 2.30pm (Wed & Sat only). £10-£48.50. Almeida Theatre, N1 1TA. almeida.co.uk