SOURCE: Steel, David. “Ionesco and Rattigan … Or Watson at the Theatre Tonight?” French Studies Bulletin 41 (winter 1991-1992): 12-15.

In the following essay, Steel finds parallels between Rattigan's French without Tears and Eugene Ionesco's La Canatrice chauve.

Like the eponymous anti-protagonist of Ionesco's La Cantatrice chauve, the Bobby Watson of the first scene puts in no appearance in the play though he perhaps has more hair than her. Or does she? Or had they? For Bobby Watson, we remember, unlike the singular prima donna, is plural, indeed multitudinous. As the playwright himself confirmed: ‘Les trois quarts des habitants de la ville, hommes, femmes, enfants, chats, idéologues, portaient le nom de Bobby Watson’.¹ Dead and buried but alive and kicking, married yet single, of variable gender and relationship, the Watpersons have, as sole common denominator, in addition to their name, their profession. No, not Bobbies on the beat, but...