“David Ralf was a hammy joy as both the bumbling, voluble logician and the brash, chippy Northern rhinosceptic Botard, who later converts in an attempt to “move with the times.” Ed Cripps ★★★★★

“Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is absurdist theatre at its most absurd. We, the audience, are helpless witnesses of the demise of a small French community as its members transform one-by-one into rampaging, snorting, multi-horned, rhinoceroses.” Liv Edwards ★★★★★

Rhinoceros ★★★★★

Review by Ed Cripps

Eugène Ionesco was, along with Samuel Beckett, one of the pioneers of French absurdist theatre during the 1950’s. His early plays, such as The Bald Soprano (1950) and The Lesson (1951), satirise the banal anonymity of bourgeois existence and dismantle logic and language to hilarious and unsettling extremes. Rhinoceros (1959), however, is rather a different creature. Often read as an allegory for the dangers of unthinking political extremism, the play also explores more general notions of identity, conformity, causality, and morality.

Director Lewis Godfrey’s decision to pare down this dense, quixotic three-act masterpiece to a one-hour production with few props and not a rhino mask in sight often works in the play’s favour and roots it in the psychological rather than the surreal, but at other times it feels rushed and laboured rather than elliptical and intriguing. The first act, for instance, does not capture the subtle anarchy of Ionesco’s wit: the opening conversation between Jean and Berenger lacks sparkle, the rhinoceros sightings are a touch overbaked, and the (far from easy) scene with the two parallel conversations between Logician, Café Owner, Berenger and Jean need more careful orchestration (I could barely hear the Café Owner).

Having said that, David Ralf was a hammy joy as both the bumbling, voluble logician and the brash, chippy Northern rhinosceptic Botard, who later converts in an attempt to “move with the times.” Arabella, who also plays office boss Mr Papillon, shows flashes of Penelope Keith as the earnest, disapproving Jean in the first act, before her disquietingly convincing (and drawn-out) transformation into a rhinoceros in the second. Matt Monaghan is fine as Berenger and evokes the banal concerns with which Berenger, like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, reacts to the extraordinary: for instance, he laments Mr Papillon’s transformation because “he had such a good job”. His final cry that he is not going to surrender, like Hugo’s at the end of Sartre’s Les mains sales, is defiant, but seemingly doomed.

I just wonder whether the cast could have done more with this. It is a wonderful play, replete with dry surreal humour and rich in political and philosophical resonances (rhinoceritis as return to “law of nature”; Berenger’s wish that the outbreak could have started in another country; their popularity with celebrities; their eventual monopoly of the airwaves), but all I can remember is an hour of shouting, groaning and a jingle straight out of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Overall, though, this is a solid, if unspectacular adaptation with the occasional glimpse of something more.

Rhinoceros ★★★★★

Review by Liv Edwards

As Botard, one of Rhinoceros’ most grounded characters booms, “this is utter madness”. Ionesco’s Rhinoceros is absurdist theatre at its most absurd. We, the audience, are helpless witnesses of the demise of a small French community as its members transform one-by-one into rampaging, snorting, multi-horned, rhinoceroses.  A play with such a synopsis is an unquestionably bold undertaking for any theatre company and student production team Pineapple Productions were, at times, bold enough to meet the challenge.

Having read none of Ionesco’s plays before arriving at the B.T. this evening, the last thing I expected was a plot in which actual “unicorned rhinoceroses” gradually replaced townspeople and yet, one of this production’s strengths is the way it documents this process of mutation from human to rhinoceros. Characters like Dudard, played by Nathan Letore; Daisy, played Chloe Orrock and most impressively, Jean, played by Arablla Lawson, transformed into rhinoceroses on stage: their voices grew audibly gruffer, their shoulders increasingly hunched, their heads menacingly bowed – the only aesthetic addition to their transformation was an eerie green light, apparently the skin tone of rhinoceroses. In the thrust stage set-up audience member stares across at audience member as they too turn increasingly eerie green. We become one of “them”.

Whilst the set’s pared down props, stage and costume enhanced the dramatic effect of the characters’ physical transformations from human to beast, it let down the show in other areas. Minimal props can of course be incredibly effective, but using blue plastic cups to serve whiskey in a café and two small round tables to serve as a bed, which left all who lay upon it with legs drooping to the ground from the knee, undermined the integrity of the production.

However, some truly excellent performances spoke boldly where props didn’t. David Ralf brilliantly characterised both the eccentric intellectual The Logician and northern realist Botard and his every appearance on stage was like a breath of fresh air. Matt Monaghan’s performance as embattled individual Berenger grew stronger as the play progressed, and Nathan Letore’s subtle Dudard quietly commanded the stage. Arabella Lawson gave a truly sophisticated performance as pedant Jean, capturing his masculinity in her posture, voice, even mannerisms and, just as adeptly, she tackled the difficult task of physically becoming a rhinoceros. To reiterate, Arabella plays a man who transforms into a rhinoceros and does it in style.

Director Lewis Godfrey’s Rhinoceroses showed flashes of creative genius in its menacing evocation of a looming herd of people-rhinoceroses as poor Berenger cowered in the dark. However, it told Ionesco’s fable but nothing more: do the Pineapple Production team think that we are dealing with a play about communism? Nazism? Society and the individual? And, what is it about it that is relevant right now? Rhinoceros is a fascinating play and anyone remotely interested in absurdist theatre should go. The ambiguity of this production’s message will undoubtedly get your own mind racing about why on earth, as Berenger says,  “there would be nothing wrong with being a rhinoceros”.