A "Leçon" between Bitter Laughter and Dark Crime

"La leçon" by the Romanian-French author Eugène Ionesco, well known in the so-called theater of the absurd, even represents one of its peaks, revolving around brutality in the teaching environment. A young girl indeed arrives at the home of an eccentric old professor. Welcomed by a discreet yet treacherous housekeeper, she is gradually plunged into a toxic lesson, a real trap in which the initially timid professor develops an intense anger that leads him to kill his student with a knife.

A tight masterpiece (one act of just over an hour), the play transitions from bitter laughter to drama, from amusement at risky mathematical calculations ("4 – 1 ? 5 !") to horror.

Lucas Gimello, director and performer of the Professor, explains, at the end of a particularly successful performance praised by the audience, that he wanted to emphasize this dynamic. Loving to work on famous plays by shedding a new light on them, the actor wanted to draw inspiration from the world of Tim Burton (the XXL chairs and table recall Alice au pays des merveilles) to illustrate the contemporary issue of abuse, beyond the school environment.