Rhinoceros (review)

Absurdist playwrights question the presumed normalcy of the human condition. In Rhinoceros, characters converse about syllogisms and argue the difference between absurdity and madness. This play speaks to the absurd nature of fascist conformity—be it Hitler's regime during World War II or the religious zealotry of recent events. Berkeley Repertory Theatre stages Ionesco's comments on socially absurd ideology in highly physical ways: actors' bodies adopt rhinoceros-like mannerisms; the set transforms into a rhinoceros horn; and spatial orientation eventually rotates ninety degrees southward such that the front door opens up from the ground. Director Barbara Damashek embraces Ionesco's belief that the stage and its properties should speak for characters whose words are hopelessly inadequate.

When this play opened in Dusseldorf in 1959, it spoke to a generation of Europeans who had lived through Hitler's conformist doctrines. Journalists regarded it as an apt metaphorical explanation for how German citizens became Nazis. Although Ionesco wrote the play in response to Hitler's regime and French occupation, recent events in Afghanistan involving the Taliban remind us that any ideology taken to an extreme can lead to tragic conformity. Within these extremist groups, the pressure to conform is what holds people together and what automatically excludes those who resist.

Translators Allen Kuharski and Georges Moskos give this production a dialogic ease that is difficult to achieve with Ionesco's work. Matthew Spiro adds a soundtrack of live music and recorded rhinoceros sounds that complement this dialogue. Set designer Christopher Barreca takes Adolphe Appia's and Gordon Craig's modern concepts of plastic, moldable stage space to a level of absurdity: the set is a character in this production; it too succumbs to rhinoceritis by the end of the show.

The set begins as a minimalist, abstract rendering of a town square: a diamond-shaped floor extends one point of a thrust configuration into the audience while its opposing point rakes upward toward the back of the stage; actors bring in café tables with tall umbrellas and chairs to establish a conversational marketplace; a grocer's wife sits atop a ladder to indicate an upper story and looks through blinds hung to serve as a window. Actors traipse in and out of this diamond area, responding with varying degrees of panic or consternation to the influx of rhinoceroses, who are represented by trumpeting sounds, hoof beats, and a cloud of dust from offstage. These sounds change direction with each rhino sighting, and the actors follow the imaginary animals' movement with their eyes. With each rhino entrance, at least one prop is dropped, spilled, or broken to mark the disruption.

Ionesco's main character, Berenger (Geoff Hoyle), is the only human who manages to resist being rhinocerized by the end of the play. In the first rhino sighting, Berenger is nonplussed. He talks calmly with his friend Jean (Jarion Monroe) about the nature of rhinos and remains unaffected until Jean shows signs of rhinoceritis. Geoff Hoyle is a consummate clown who ironically serves as the only rational being in this production. He plays Berenger's sanity with the physical precision of clowning but none of its antics. It is as if the rest of the cast and the set itself have absorbed Hoyle's usual plasticity. All of the actors take on rhinoceros characteristics throughout the production—these symptoms range from a budding forehead protrusion to stomping, shoving, snorting, trumpeting, and aggravated shuffling. Jarion Monroe changes from hardheaded Jean to a creature whose body then exhibits this stubborn nature as he crashes into furniture. Berenger is the only character who manages to escape these symptoms.

Berenger is consistently late for work at a publisher's shop. He resists the conformity of punching a time clock and flatters his coworker, Daisy (Susan Marie Brecht) to avoid reprimand. He is in love with her, as are the other men, and Susan Marie Brecht plays the classic 1940s secretary with skillful acknowledgement of just how far her beauty...