By Jim Rutter

At first glance, puppets provide a potent vehicle for staging Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist plays. Punch and Judy introduced Ionesco to theater’s power, showing him a caricatured spectacle that underlined the world’s “grotesque and brutal truth.”

In his Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It, writer Amédée and his switchboard operator wife Madeleine live in a cramped Parisian flat, circa 1954. For 15 years, a corpse has occupied the adjoining chamber, sprouting mushrooms that cover the apartment. The dead body begins to grow to gigantic proportions, pushing the couple out of their complacency and forcing them to dispose of it in order to move forward.

Unfortunately, A:B production’s incoherent and sloppy presentation detracts from the force of Ionesco’s writing. The puppets consisted of doll’s clothing stitched into human forms and stuffed with cotton. Nick Allin and Lindsey Burkland voiced the roles, holding the puppets in tight fists while maneuvering them on a diorama set like a child’s tea party.

Burkland added furniture mid-scene, dug around for props, and she and Allin often held the puppets in mid-air to act out the lines themselves. Allin’s measured performance could have otherwise coasted through the role without the assistance of felt and cardboard.

I stopped watching and kept listening, captivated by the big themes buried beneath the absurd veneer. Ionesco captures the guilt and horror — of collaboration and moral omission — that nihilated post-WWII European intellectual thought. Amédée also anticipates the cult of apologizing for history that’s dominated the last quarter-century of academic and political discourse.

Like the corpse, the play grew on me.

$15, Sept. 9 at 9:30PM, Sept. 10 at 6PM, The Sovereign Building, 714 Market St.