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Dir: Dominic Cooke.
Cast: Royal Court Theatre
Description: Eugene Ionesco's satire, exploring apathy and conformity. Translated by Martin Crimp and directed by Dominic Cooke.
Trains: Tube: Sloane Square 
Phone: 0207565 5000
Website: www.royalcourttheatre.com
The blinkered townsfolk in Rhinoceros are unable to accept that said beasts are transformed humans
What abundant laughter attends Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros! Dominic Cooke's alluring production of this Theatre of the Absurd black comedy - a classic allegory - was first seen at the Court with Laurence Olivier in 1960.
It reminds us how accomplished British actors are at sending-up Gallic pomposity and pedantry. Ionesco's purpose, though, is deadly serious. In 1938 the Romanian-born writer noticed how his friends succumbed to Romania's fascist Iron Guard as if seized by a contagion. He described them as akin to rhinoceroses.
His play cynically views the human drive to conformity and, perhaps influenced by Hitler's occupation of France, an ostrich-like refusal to face the truth. "They're not fundamentally aggressive," claims Paul Chahidi's Dudard, as rhinoceroses run wild through the town.
At first comedy rules. How cruelly pleasing to watch Ionesco's blinkered inhabitants of a seriously provincial French town when the first rhinoceros, unseen but thunderous as a Tube train, crashes into the central square. The damage to Anthony Ward's unevocative and underdeveloped set is an omen of turbulence. Although townsfolk are quick to anger, outrage and anxiety, they take time to reach a panicky awareness that the rhinoceroses are metamorphosed human beings.
Two scenes, one preposterously amusing, the other shimmering with black comedy, mark the process. An employee's wife (Alwyne Taylor's delectable Madame Boeuf) arrives at the grimly bureaucratic office where the placid hero, Benedict Cumberbatch's Berenger, labours. She is pursued by a rhinoceros that she realises is her own husband.
Berenger's best friend, Jasper Britton's Jean, who first appears in a three-piece suit and a fit of smug, self-adoring belligerence, later undergoes a swift physical and vocal transformation that marks his rhinocerisation.
Britton's powerfully articulated performance, a comic and dramatic bull's-eye, is not matched by Cumberbatch's. As Berenger he effectively registers amiability and gauche passion for Zawe Ashton's Daisy but not real terror when he takes a defiant stand to resist becoming a rhinoceros.
Cooke, fortified by Martin Crimp's wittily amusing translation, works best in the fields of black comedy. He has a clear eye for menace, too, with the chilling final tableau of rhinoceroses surrounding all exits in Berenger's wrecked apartment.
The text, though, needs trimming. The prolonged satirical-absurdist arguments, which make laboured nonsense of logic, need severe pruning. Even so Rhinoceros remains utterly captivating.
Until 15 Dec (020 7565 5000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
This production of Rhinoceros leaves little to the imagination; in the early scenes I would have prefered less falling scenery, smoke and flashing lights and more of the menacing rumble of what is to come.
Jasper Britton's vertuoso physical transition into a rhino is lessened again by over production, as a large rhino head is thrust through the scenery just incase we didn't get the point.
Martin Crimp's translation has gone for the laugh, of which there are many, but the play needs trimming, and the subtleties left intact. At the moment it's an over extended metaphor. However, the final scene with the rhinoceros at every exit is chilling, and could have been more so if only we had not seen that earlier appearance. The play worth seeing.
- Jan Harris, London England
