Victims of Duty

The moments that best capture the surreal zeal of this rarely performed Eugene Ionesco play come in the very last scene, when the ultracomfortable Parisian apartment of well-to-do couple Choubert and Madeleine is filled with knife fights and a seemingly endless parade of coffee cups. If you're not sure of the point of it all, well, that's kind of Ionesco's point, and that of the absurdist theatrical movement he was at the heart of. The play is designed to envelop you with such a rich and surprising juxtaposition of ideas and images that you might just begin to question your quaint worldview. Cutting Ball's production isn't quite up to that task. The actors in particular don't have the chops needed to tease out Ionesco's more subtle mind games, especially as we're descending down memory lane into Choubert's relationship with his parents. But this 85-minute production has enough of the true taste of the unsettling and very funny world of Ionesco to leave you wanting more.