La sumisión y el porvenir está en los huevos

70 years have gone by since La sumisión was premièred in France, a comedy that is part of the rich heritage of 20th-century theatre yet practically unpublished in Spain. With its brazen and irreverent humour, par for the course in the author’s career, this was considered a controversial work on account of its scathing mockery of conservatism, of the manipulation exercised by the powers that be, and of the ethical disaster we are engulfed in.

In this madcap farce, Ionesco tells the story of Jacob, a young man so disenchanted with the world around him that he spends his days brooding on a sofa, refusing to start a family; his parents and grandmother try to quell his disobedience by urging him to get married and have lots of children. In an act of rebelliousness, Jacob says he has no intention of doing so unless it is with the ugliest woman in the world, but his parents counterattack by introducing him to Roberta, a girl with three noses, who ends up seducing him.

Although listening to Ionesco can sometimes be unbearable and although it’s certainly not easy for the general public to like him, it’s never hard to understand what he has to say: his metaphors are clear and courageous, he does not bite his tongue. Faced with a global society under attack by populism and reactionary ideologies, he his is a dissenting and cutting voice. He urges us to be disobedient, to rebel, not to renounce our principles, not to lapse into submission.

Morfeo Teatro presents this irreverent staging that takes us from gales of laughter to moments of astonishment. An icon of the theatre of the absurd, it rages furiously against ultraconservative thinking.