Ruth Leon recommends… Ionesco – Rhinoceros

Ionesco – Rhinoceros​
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Eugene Ionesco was a Romanian-French playwright who was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century. Ionesco instigated a revolution in ideas and techniques of drama, beginning with his ‘anti play’, The Bald Soprano, which contributed to the beginnings of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd. This includes a number of plays that, following the ideas of the philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism. He died 30 years ago this week.

Rhinocéros (first produced in 1959) is perhaps the most accessible of his plays but that’s not saying much when you realise that it’s about Bérenger, a semi-autobiographical figure who appears in several of the plays, always expressing his wonderment and anguish at the strangeness of reality. He is comically naïve, engaging the audience’s sympathy.
 
In  Rhinocéros (this production is from Peepolykus in 2002) he watches his friends turning into rhinoceroses one by one until he alone stands unchanged against this mass movement. It is in this play that Ionesco most forcefully expresses his horror of conformism, inspired by the rise of the Fascists in Romania in the 1930s. This reference may be lost on us today but there’s no missing the humour and humanity in the writing.

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