The audience responded to separate theatrical moments, touches, stunts in [La Turista], though it could not follow the alogic of the play, to use [an] appropriate term. It did follow the play's drift, its strident tone, its attitude of abuse, rebellion and anguished confusion.

In its presentation of the fragments of the author's confused response to the complex society against which he is reacting, the production makes a kind of eclectic free use of elements of the avant garde theatre, and of films such as Truffaut's and Godard's. This new theatre creates new structures for human experience out of radical combinations of the structures of games, rituals, marches, processions, oratory, prayer, etc. The emphasis is shifted from the verbal or literary to a physical expression of ideas and emotions—at least the distinctions between the two are blurred.

If Ionesco only appears to bombard the audience with...