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RHINOCEROS. By Eugene Ionesco. Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California. 26 January 2002.
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...