Peter Pan Jr.

Mathematically, the structure and argument of a Eugene lonesco play used to go something like this: 2 plus 2 equals 6.6 plus the vectorial cosine of pi times a radio squared. Then came Rhinoceros. Nearly everyone on stage turned into a rhino, which was passing strange, but the clear theme was 20th Century Conformity and 2 plus 2 damn near equaled 4. Was lonesco finking out of the avantgarde? Lots of people thought so.

As if to satisfy all, lonesco's new play, which has just opened in Duesseldorf, seems to have one foot in the commercial theater while the other taps blindly on the plains of heaven. It is called The Air Walker. The protagonist is Berenger again, the same all-purpose hero who first appeared in The Killer, then reappeared as the clerk hero of Rhinoceros.

Bits & Bystanders. This time Berenger is a French writer living in England. The curtain goes up, and nothing very extraordinary happens for a while. A Greek column totters onto the stage, for example, wobbling like a foal because it is young and learning to stand. A little tree leaves the stage. When the column goes the tree comes back, maintaining the balance of nature, except when a character called Mr. Antiworld is on stage: then the tree and the column both remain, supposedly making the music of the spheres sound like a ton of breaking glass.

Writer Berenger ponderously tells a reporter that life is a thousand times more gruesome than literature can ever be. A German plane, "left over from the war," bombs his house to bits, and Berenger unsurprisedly picks up the bits and carries them off. So far, so far out.

But then a miracle happens. Berenger goes for a walk through the beautiful English countryside and decides that the key to the world is love. Euphoric with the discovery, he rises off the ground--a few feet at first, but soon he's really up there, Peter Pan Jr. over a crowd of witnesses, proclaiming the wonder of flight, saying all you need is "will and self-confidence" and you can turn into a 707. "One should vaccinate these foreigners," says an English bystander.

Beyond the Future. Berenger encourages others to join him in the air. "Simply jump up as if to reach an imaginary tree branch and pull yourself up," he instructs. "From there, pull up to other branches. You will never run out of them. You can go as high as you want." For a shattering moment, the playwright who wrote The Lesson and The Bald Soprano sounds like Norman Vincent Peale. Then Berenger exits alone--straight up.

The darkness drops again. When Berenger returns, he is limp, stammering, and exhausted. He has seen beyond the future. On the highest fringes of heaven are columns of guillotined people, geese with human bodies, and massive grasshoppers. Beyond them, where space and time meet, there is absolutely nothing.

Nothing to the third power equals one successful playwright. A Paris production of The Air Walker is being prepared by Jean-Louis Barrault. London and New York productions will follow.

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