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Eugene Ionesco frequently illustrated his favorite theme–the isolation of the individual in a world of banality–by placing an ordinary middle-class couple in a room and then having something attempt to invade the room. The menacing annoyance might be a war (A Hell of a Mess), a growing corpse in the next room (Amedee), or a stream of invisible guests (The Chairs). In Frenzy for Two, or More . . . (sometimes translated as Frenzy for Two, and the Same to You . . .) the invader is a war outside the small apartment where an artist and his mistress, identified only as He and She, squabble over whether they weren’t better off with their former spouses. “If I’d never seen you, we’d never have met. Perhaps I’d be traveling now, perhaps I’d be younger,” sighs He. She whines, “I left my children behind–the children I never had–but I could have had children, as many as I liked.”
Occasionally, when the conflagration comes too near, they abandon this pastime to unite in barricading the doors and windows. But once the threat subsides they return to their bickering. The neighbors have been taken away by the soldiers already. “Keep calm, it’s not us they’re after,” He assures She. Ionesco might mean them to be bourgeois citizens who ignore atrocities and totalitarianism as long as it doesn’t affect them, but there’s no clear indication that they are, and there’s no indication who’s fighting whom in the street below.
