Life
Rhinoceros review: ‘don’t follow the herd’
The message of this 1959 absurdist play survives. But instead of looking back at the horrors of conformism in 20th-century Europe, it now warns of the stampede ahead
April 9, 2025 09:55
The message of this 1959 absurdist play survives. But instead of looking back at the horrors of conformism in 20th-century Europe, it now warns of the stampede ahead
April 9, 2025 09:55It is difficult to think of a more absurd time than the one we are living through. The Romanian/French dramatist Eugene Ionesco wrote this absurdist play in 1959 and in the comfort of a well-established post-war world order. This revival arrives at a time when that stability has been turned on its head and rising populism threatens to turn civilised nations into something resembling a stampeding herd of, well, rhinos.
Like Kafka’s insect, there is something extra inhuman about Ionesco’s horned creature. The metamorphosis from person to beast is still shocking and a powerful metaphor for the dangers of conformism. Not that I spotted such symbolism when I saw the 1974 film version as a boy. Here writer/director Omar Elerian casts Joshua McGuire as Jean, a fellow for whom being normal is the highest of aspirations, and Sopé Dìrísù as his mild-mannered best friend, Berenger.
The metamorphosis from person to beast is still shocking and a powerful metaphor for the dangers of conformism
As in the film, Elerian, who directed an acclaimed revival of the author’s The Chairs, goes for laughs. His narrator, played by Paul Hunter, is a mad professor type who, like his team of helpers, has heavily starched hair that seems to have been given electric shock therapy.
Using mime and barely any props, they conjure the setting of a provincial town in which nothing much interesting happens. Hunter’s narrator immediately dismantles the fourth wall by commending the audience for spending their money and time on theatre instead of safer pursuits.
Later he conscripts many of them into an orchestra of kazoo players to represent, possibly unconvincingly the sound of rhinos. That said, I know not what a rhino sounds like so perhaps the effect is spot on. In all this context Dìrísù’s quietly bewildered Berenger is easily the best adjusted. Yet he is criticised by his friend Jean for being too transgressive, what with the bouts of drinking and his love for his colleague Daisy (Anoushka Lucas). But surely nothing is impossible when people begin to turn into rhinos. Only Berenger seems disturbed by the possibility of becoming one of the herd.
The horror of the play is diluted by Elerian’s decision to pitch it primarily as a madcap comedy. His translation of Ionesco’s original French-language script unnecessarily strains to make the absurd relatable. More problematic is that apart from Dìrísù, the cast appear to be enjoying themselves with all the knowing theatre in-jokes. This diminishes the play’s sincerity. Yet its message survives. Only instead of looking back at the horrors of conformism in 20th-century Europe, it now warns of the stampede heading our way.
Rhinoceros
Almeida Theatre
★★★