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Southwark Playhouse, LondonIt can feel exasperating at times but this well-performed 1951 drama offers a smart balance of discomfort and laughsEugène Ionesco’s single-act play, about a lesson that unravels into baroque violence inflicted by a professor on his pupil, is built on deliberate, head-scratching confusions. It is only in the final moments that it clarifies all the comic absurdity that has come before, with an ending that lands like a sinister punchline. The drama was clearly a reflection on Nazism and the tyranny that pervaded Europe in the years before its 1951 premiere.A new pupil (Hazel Caulfield) visits a professor (Jerome Ngonadi) whose manner gradually turns from courteous to enraged. The pupil is of uncertain age – she resembles a wide-eyed child yet also has sophisticated, albeit quirky, intellectual rationale for the simple maths exercises he sets her.At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 23 July Continue reading...