It is disconcerting to experience the world on the stage, but in The Killer, it is there all the same. The atmosphere hovers over the action, a metaphysical cloud in our midst; on the stage, the machinations of our humdrum, hurried world….

We are aware that the play is about the System, the Establishment, the State, and we feel good because we have labelled a part. There is security in labelling. We know that the play has characters representing the crowd, the bureaucrat—all those who have sacrificed individual will to functions. Fine! So far the world is familiar. Everybody is writing about those people. What begins to bother us is that at the point where his contemporaries instruct, Ionesco remains silent. Just where does he stand? His characters, except for Berenger, are all devoid of passion; they have no sympathy for each other; there is no human...