The latest mainstage production at our Phoenix Theatre is Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist comedy The Killing Game. Directed by Theatre professor Conrad Alexandrowicz, from a translation by Helen Gary Bishop, The Killing Game transcends the ordinary by offering a surreal, captivating play that immerses audiences in the tale of a town facing a deadly plague. As the body count rises, accusations fly, tensions rise, and the line between reality and absurdity is blurred. Death spares no one, regardless of wealth, age, innocence, or guilt, turning the community into a chaotic mix of paranoia, hypocrisy and opportunism.
“Over the course of working on this piece, I realized that it could be about a different kind of crisis,” Alexandrowicz said in this interview with the local Nexus newspaper. “It’s not really about a deadly epidemic, it’s a satire on people’s folly, bad behaviour, criminality. It could be something else that [Ionesco] had chosen to reveal all these things. It presents a very dim view of humanity, indeed.”
Despite its dark subject matter, The Killing Game — one of Ionesco’s last plays — is filled with humour and reveals how social connections can become fragile when confronted with an existential threat. With razor-sharp wit and keen satire, Ionesco skillfully allows the audience to engage while maintaining a sense of detachment through laughter. (“The human drama is as absurd as it is painful,” Ionesco observed.)
“The absurdists were very much about the way the comic and the tragic are intertwined, it’s not an either/or proposition,” continues Alexandrowicz. “We laugh at things that are horrible sometimes, and I’ve really tried to go as far as I could with that idea. Of course we laugh at all this ridiculous activity and nonsense and insane beliefs that people hold. It makes people dropping dead mostly hilarious, and I’m really pushing the comedic aspect of this because I think that’s what [Ionesco] intends us to experience.”
The Killing Game cast (photo: Dean Kalyan)
Fearing a cast and creative team of over 25 students, The Killing Game offers a memorable commentary on the absurdity of society in the face of an uncontrollable crisis.
The Killing Game runs February 13–22 at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre. Tickets start at $18.