Theatre Review – Eugene Ionesco – Rhinoceros

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1960 – Penguin Books – Spoiler alerts Ionesco’s best known absurdist drama, asking the question, if everyone except you turned into a rhino, who’s tragedy would it be? Theirs or yours? Berenger is being told off by his friend, Jean, for being an unpunctual, drunkard and an untidy man, when their French Village café conversation is interrupted as a rhino is seen by everyone except the audience, charging up the street. Naturally everyone wonders what it is doing as there are no zoos or circuses nearby. A philosopher fails to even take in the event as he is busy arguing a preposterous highly illogical mathematical conundrum about the number of legs two cats might share if some legs were removed. Just as everyone tries putting the incident behind them, another rhino charges by and no one can decide whether it is the same one making a return journey or a second rhino. No one can tell if the rhinos had one horn or two or if they were of an African or Asian species. Act Two scene one has Berenger at his legal office works, when it becomes apparent that the rhinos are everywhere, amidst rumours that they may be people turning into rhinos. The first scene of the act ends as one man off-stage turns into one, wrecks the stairs, and stampedes off with his wife riding on his back. The cast are assisted off-stage by the fire-department. Scene Two has Berenger going to Jean’s apartment only to witness Jean and Jean’s neighbors grow Rhino’s heads and Berenger has to flee for his life. Act Three has Berenger and the girl he loves, Daisy, as the last living humans – rhino noises even come through the radio and phone lines. As Berenger proposes that they make love to repopulate the World as a new Adam & Eve, Daisy runs away into the rhino herds outside Berenger’s house. Berenger rages that he will never be a Rhino, though it may be that he resents his alienation from the metamorphosis more. The rhinos are a strange metaphor for beastly aggression, stubborn pride, human destructiveness, etc. This may be the most surreal play ever conceived, and done right it works superbly. A movie version with Zero Mostel & Gene Wilder in 1974 was a major commercial disaster though. Arthur Chappell