These three great plays by one of the founding fathers of the theatre of the absurd, are alive and kicking with tragedy and humour, bleakness and farce. In Rhinoceros we are shown the innate brutality of people as everyone, except for Berenger, turn into clumsy, unthinking rhinoceroses. The Chairs depicts the futile struggle of two old people to convey the meaning of life to the rest of humanity, while The Lesson is a chilling, but anarchically funny drama of verbal domination. In these three 'antiplays' dream, nonsense and fantasy combine to create an unsettling, bizarre view of society.

In Rhinoceros, as in his earlier plays, Ionesco startles audiences with a world that invariably erupts in explosive laughter and nightmare anxiety. A rhinoceros suddenly appears in a small town, tramping through its peaceful streets. Soon there are two, then three, until the "movement" is universal: a transformation of average citizens into beasts, as they learn to move with the times. Finally, only one man remains. "I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way until the end. I'm not capitulating "
Rhinoceros is a commentary on the absurdity of the human condition made tolerable only by self-delusion. It shows us the struggle of the individual to maintain integrity and identity alone in a world where all others have succumbed to the "beauty" of brute force, natural energy, and mindlessness.
Includes Rhinoceros, The Leader, The Future Is in Eggs or It Takes All Sorts to Make a World

First produced in 1963 starring Alec Guinness and successfully revived to great acclaim on Broadway in 2009, this absurdist exploration of ego and mortality is set in the crumbling throne-room of the palace in an unnamed country where King Berenger the First has only the duration of the play to live. Once, it seemed he ruled over an immense empire and commanded great armies, now his kingdom has shrunk to the confines of his garden wall. Refusing to accept his end, he is attended by his present and former Queens who must help him face the final inevitable truth of life: death.

The sublime is confused with the ridiculous in this savage commentary on the human condition, a staple of every theatre classroom and 20th century drama. A small town is besieged by one roaring citizen who becomes a rhinoceros and proceeds to trample on the social order. As more citizens are transformed into rhinoceroses, the trampling becomes overwhelming, and more and more citizens become rhinoceroses. One sane man, Berenger, remains, unable to change his form and identity.

The author of such modern classics as The Bald Soprano, Exit the King, Rhinoceros, and The Chairs, Eugene Ionesco is "one of the most important and influential figures in the modern theater" (Library Journal). This crucial collection combines The New Tenant with Amedee and Victims of Duty--the plays Richard Gilman has called, along with The Killer, Ionesco's "greatest plays, works of the same solidity, fulness, and permanence as those of] his predecessors in the dramatic revolution that began with Ibsen and is still going on."
In Amedee, the title character and his wife have a problem--not so much the corpse in their bedroom as the fact that it's been there for fifteen years and is now growing, slowly but surely crowding them out of their apartment.
In The New Tenant a similar crowding is caused by an excess of furniture--as Harold Hobson said in the London Times, "there is not dramatist . . . who can make furniture speak as eloquently as Ionesco, and here he makes it the perfect, the terrifying symbol of the deranged mind."
In Victims of Duty, Ionesco parodies the conformity of modern life by plunging his characters into an obscure search for "Mallot with a t." In these as in all his plays, Ionesco poses and solves his tragicomic dilemmas with the brilliant blend of gravity and hilarity that is the hallmark of the absurdist theater.

Exit the King is a highly stylized, ritualized death rite unfolding the final hours of the once-great king Berenger the First. As he dies, his kingdom also dies. His armies suffer defeat, the young emigrate, the seasons change overnight, and his kingdom's borders shrink to the outline of his throne. At last, as the curtain falls, the king himself dissolves into a gray mist.
The Killer is a study of pure evil. Berenger, a conscientious citizen, finds himself in a radiantly beautiful city marred only by the presence of a killer. Berenger's determination to find the murderer in the face of official indifference and his final defeat at the hands of an impersonal, pitiless cruelty speak with the universality of Kafka's The Trial.
Macbett, inspired by Shakespeare's play, is "a grotesque joke . . . and] a very funny play. . . . Ionecso maliciously undermines sources and traditions, spoofing Shakespeare along with tragedy."--Mel Gussow, The New York Times

This collection brings together the four plays that feature Ionesco's everyman protagonist Jean Berenger. In `The Killer', he comes across a "radiant city", an ideal civilization which is unfortunately being terrorized by a killer, whom he decides to track down and dissuade from committing any further crimes. In `Rhinoceros', he is the only person in a provincial town who is resisting "rhinoceritis", an affliction that turn its victims into the eponymous horned beasts. In `Exit the King', he is the powerful King Berenger the First, who refuses to acknowledge that he is dying. And in `Strolling in the Air', he acquires the capacity of flight and discovers that the celestial vault is held up by a gigantic pink pillar. While each play in the Berenger cycle is unique, they are all prime examples of Ionesco's conception of the theatre of the absurd, and touch on themes that preoccupied Ionesco throughout his career, such as mortality, alienation, freedom and the evils of Fascism. This volume constitutes a perfect introduction to one of the twentieth century's most original and influential playwrights.

In a house on an island a very old couple pass their time with private games and half-remembered stories. With brilliant eccentricity, Ionesco's 'tragic farce' combines a comic portrait of human folly with a magical experiment in theatrical possibilities.

The leading figure of absurdist theater and one of the great innovators of the modern stage, Eugene Ionesco (1909-94) did not write his first play, The Bald Soprano, until 1950. He went on to become an internationally renowned master of modern drama, famous for the comic proportions and bizarre effects that allow his work to be simultaneously hilarious, tragic, and profound. As Ionesco has said, "Theater is not literature. . . . It is simply what cannot be expressed by any other means."