Rhinoceros: Clever and playful –but not quite a piece for our times

Telegraph

02-04-2025

Ingeniously introducing us to a provincial French town whose inhabitants morph into indomitable rhinos, when Ionesco's Rhinoceros – an allegory of individual defiance in the face of stampeding conformism – premiered in Dusseldorf in 1959, it was met with a widely reported 10-minute ovation.
It valuably spoke to a Europe shaken by totalitarian horror, on the Left as well as the Right. At the 1960 London premiere, Laurence Olivier starred as the refusenik clerk Berenger, directed by Orson Welles. The Romanian-French playwright inspired Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill and others.
Yet where Rhinoceros once roamed the cultural landscape, eliciting awe, along with the rest of its author's Absurdist oeuvre, these days it can seem a museum piece, a taxidermied classic. At the Royal Court in 2007, Benedict Cumberbatch earned raves playing Berenger but one reviewer noted the play had 'not survived its own occasion'. Has the critic Kenneth Tynan, who accused the 'anarchic wag' of steering drama up a 'blind alley', had the last laugh?
Tynan's erudite critique of Ionesco's 'anti-theatre' is actually referenced in this archly self-aware Almeida revival which often has the dependably buffoonish Paul Hunter adopting a wry narratorial role, intoning stage-directions into a microphone and even exhorting some audience participation. Given that the liberty-taking adaptation is by director Omar Elerian, who triumphed here three years ago with a revelatory production of Ionesco's The Chairs, starring the late Marcello Magni and his wife Kathryn Hunter, the production comes armed with a persuasive confidence in its artistic mission.
Presented on a minimal, mainly white set (with a raised central platform, rear-curtains, and a lot of lab coats and comically mad hair), the evening has a light, on-its-feet, deconstructed quality, the accent on multi-roling ensemble virtuosity. You don't see rhino-heads and horns sprouting, or even papier-mâché pachyderms. Instead, much is capably conveyed by sound effects (denoting the stampedes) and body language conjures the grim dehumanisation process. Joshua McGuire (big since the BBC sitcom Cheaters) memorably goes to town, contorting and bowing low, with three other cast members following suit to suggest a bestial immensity.
Given how apposite the message of the play is – take your pick from the current contagions of group-think – it should straightforwardly map onto today's nightmares and tap lasting truths about human nature. But much as this version punctures the fourth-wall, for me it still lacks real punch. We are rendered complicit by larky stealth: we're asked to practice a convoluted clap that later becomes a slap of domestic violence, and, in a rather I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue flourish, selected audience-members sound on kazoos to evoke rhino roars. But it's too cosy to cause discomfort while a lot of the honoured original text comes over as plutôt wittery.
As the odd man Berenger, a gentle, ruminative Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù (of Gangs of London fame) comes into his own at the end, appalled as his beloved Daisy (Anoushka Lucas) starts to follow the herd before standing his ground and repeatedly bellowing 'I will not surrender' despite an attempted curtain-call around him. Still, it's the stuff of appreciative applause, and ticked-off checklists, not headline-making ovations.