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 The Theatreguide.London Review

Rhinoceros
Almeida Theatre     Spring 2025

The growing popularity of the political Far Right across the world seems a good time to mount a performance of Eugène Ionesco’s 1959 play satirically depicting the rise of Fascism in terms of a small provincial town where people are turning into rhinoceroses.

The playful Almeida production, translated, directed and adapted by Omar Elerian, adds some contemporary references and a character who calls himself the provocateur (Paul Hunter) and who gets the audience to practice various arm movements and introduces the play and some of the rules of the evening because, as he explains, 'You gave up your individuality to become one' of the audience.

Our central character Bérenger (Sopé Dìrísù) arrives to the minimal white stage slightly dishevelled, possibly hung over from a night of alcohol and late for his meeting with work colleague and friend Jean (Joshua McGuire), who tries to get him to tidy up ready for work.

A woman passes carrying a bag of groceries and a cat represented by a watermelon, which has become a symbol of Palestine. A little later, she returns, incredibly upset that a stampede of rhinoceroses has crushed the cat.

Instead of talking about the danger the violence represents, the group, with the exception of the distressed woman, spends time debating whether the creatures have one horn or two and are perhaps of Asiatic or African origin.

The scene illustrates the complacency of people ignoring the potential violence to come. It is a mildly amusing but dull scene, a pattern the show repeats many times with random jokes about tech billionaires wanting to 'populate Mars', 'fake news' and stage directions being recited by the provocateur who even brings out a reading of the critic Kenneth Tynan describing Ionesco as 'anti-realist, anti-reality'.

The show even includes some music. Bérenger’s love interest Daisy (Anoushka Lucas) sings a song in Italian as the words “what do you want meaning for?' are projected on the back curtain.

By the second half, the growing number of rhinoceroses are illustrated by the audience blowing on kazoos, their noise orchestrated by the provocateur.

As the stage darkens in the closing moments of the play, the town’s last unchanged human, Bérenger, convulses in agony, refusing to join the rest and repeatedly saying, 'I won’t surrender.'

At that point, the rest of the cast in white laboratory uniforms walk to the front of the stage and, smiling under bright lights, bow to the audience applause as Bérenger continues his resistance in the background.

It is a final illustration of peer pressure, but I noticed the woman sitting beside me, who had enjoyed the show, at that point looked concerned and didn’t applaud.

Although the show’s running time is 160 minutes long, it is an imaginative, unusual production, well performed and peppered with light gentle jokes, bits of philosophy and political ideas. It is even at times entertaining.

Keith McKenna