Rhinoceros
Part of the reason that there’s not been a London production of Eugene Ionesco’s classic absurdist satire Rhinoceros in almost 20 years is that there’s not a huge amount you can *do* to it: it is a drama about a town full of people turning into rhinos as an allegory for totalitarianism – you can’t really graft on a radical new meaning or central conceit.
But Omar Elerian – contemporary British theatre’s most consummate director of leftfield absurdism – very much has his cake and eats it with an enjoyable revival that pays fanboy-esque homage to Ionesco’s 1959 original, while also bolting on loads of fun extra stuff.
Specifically, he has roped in Paul Hunter and Hayley Carmichael – best known as the wilfully chaotic theatre company Told By An Idiot – to augment his show. While the wild haired Carmichael joins in with the excellent, idiosyncratic ensemble, Hunter acts as a sort of gloriously anarchic meta narrator. Reading out the stage directions (which are followed loosely at best), he chummily chats to the audience and gets us to copy his increasingly complicated moves, in an opening that both reflects the play’s sardonic commentary on conformity and is also a bloody good laugh in a kids’ birthday party style.
Hunter is clearly man of the match, and the casting of him and Carmichael defines Elerian’s production. But they’re the heart of a terrific company and a gleefully meandering, shaggy dog like take on the play that reaches something like its apex when Anoushka Lucas...