THE HOUSE OF CORRECTION
Scene one is beaucoup Ionesco. You have a middle-class married couple, Carl and Marion, and their friend Steve. Steve tells them he’s been distraught on account of his wife’s having been brutally murdered, and he needs a place to stay until he’s back on his feet. At Marion’s request, Carl agrees to put Steve up. But when Carl and Marion are alone together, they discover that neither of them has ever seen Steve before, and each had mistakenly assumed him to be the other’s friend.
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Scene two, a day later, is almost a plot summary of Max Frisch’s Biedermann and the Firebugs. Carl confronts Steve. But Steve plays upon Carl’s shallow liberalism–baiting him with arguments about social responsibility–calls him a liar to his face, and tells him that he slept with Marion while Carl was at work. Carl, standing as tall as a throw rug, gives Steve until Sunday to leave.
The rest of the play is part farce, part melodrama, milking the situation for light satire and sudden reversals. The farce isn’t too funny, but that’s not entirely Lock’s fault. The cast and the director of this production just don’t have the sense of humor to make it work. The melodrama is a little more intriguing. I wasn’t driven mad by suspense, since there’s not enough tension for that, but it’s certainly unpredictable enough to keep you guessing.
