Southwark Playhouse, London
It can feel exasperating at times but this well-performed 1951 drama offers a smart balance of discomfort and laughs

Eugène 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.

Christopher Hone’s oak-panelled classroom set is full of surprises and secret compartments, with plenty of movement between actors under the direction of Max Lewendel, and vivid projections of the equations he scrawls on his board (video design by Ben Glover). This brings some air to this static and claustrophobic play.

The two chairs around a central table denote the power disparity that will grow wider and wider between student and master: one is large, the other dinky. The pupil is forced to squeeze into it, which gives the drama shades of Alice in Wonderland.

There is some classic comic fare (the pupil pulling things out of her sleeve, for instance), but as the professor springs new, increasingly random lessons at her, jumping from one arcane subject to another, our confusion leads to frustration and longueurs. The surrealism increases to baffling degrees, however lucid and down to earth Donald Watson’s translation.

Despite able performances, this feels distinctly like a dated and slightly one-note work that hangs on its final moments and is not nearly as resonant or engaging as Ionesco’s The Chairs, recently staged at the Almeida.

Ngonadi’s teacher is sweet and then unpredictable in his non-sequitur burblings but despite his darkening mood, and later appearance in Nazi jackboots, he remains comically benign rather than truly menacing.

There is a more interesting chemistry between him and his spiky maid (Julie Stark), who is wonderfully camp in her pale-faced severity. Together they have the gothic, conspiratorial and slightly comic air of Riff Raff and Magenta from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

The final revelation still shocks, and there is power in the point it makes about the nonsensical thinking of dictators. But it has the uncomfortable edge of a gimmick and it is a moot point whether it has been worth the frustrations during the wait.

• At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 23 July

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