The Rhinoceroses are in Charge in UMD's Absurdist Play
Sheryl Jensen
Duluth News Tribune
March 4, 2016
Snorting, galumphing and stampeding rhinoceroses have taken over. And while that may sound eerily like the current presidential political campaign, it is also the state of things in UMD's compelling production of French playwright Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros.
The plot is as absurd as it sounds. The populous of a small French village is astounded to see a runaway rhinoceros wreaking havoc in town square. Gradually, in a device worthy of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," one by one, the townspeople inexplicably transform into rhinoceroses and join the marauding herd.
Part black comedy, part horror story, and part cautionary tale, UMD's production fires on all cylinders on both the technical and acting sides of the aisle. The audience is corralled by enclosing walls with an abstract pattern of angled wood and ominous black openings. The intimacy of the German Expressionist style setting from Jenna Mady makes the audience feel even more claustrophobic when the proliferation of the rhinoceros takes a serious uptick.
Mitch Newport plays Berenger, the play's Everyman, who sees the horror around him growing and mounts a fierce internal battle to resist the allure of becoming just another one of the mindless, myopic beasts. Newport's earnest and mature performance makes an alcoholic underdog into a solitary hero by show's end.
Phil Hoelscher is a standout as Berenger's fussbudget, fidgety friend Jean who is one of the first to become a rhinoceros. Hoelscher's onstage transformation — with body contortions and aided by Ben Harvey's fabulous sound mix for Jean's voice alteration — is an acting tour de force.
Director Ann Aiko Bergeron calls the story "a comedy — of sorts." The first act is filled with funny moments, both with the verbal dexterity of the actors in their supposedly "logical" overlapping conversations and in the physical comedy of this very capable ensemble of 11 actors, many playing multiple roles. Kelsie Bias' whimsical costumes also help create what has the feel, at first, of a witty French farce.
The comedy all but disappears in the second half, however, when it becomes clear that we are seeing the results of what can happen when people do not fight evil with the spirit of their better angels. The symbolic lighting on the stage floor of green scales, the increasingly louder thundering herd sound effects and the actors menacingly encroaching, wearing simple but genuinely creepy rhinoceros masks, build the tension and change the play's tone entirely.
Recalling his own escape from his home country of Romania during WWII, Ionesco wrote Rhinoceros in 1959 to portray allegorically the Nazism and fascism he had seen spread across Europe. His message is clear, that chaos ensues when basically good people succumb to mass hysteria, unscrupulous leaders and mindless propaganda. Society degenerates into savagery where the human qualities of kindness, love, respect, compassion and trust are all mercilessly stomped on by hobnail boots.
"I am not joining you" is Berenger's plaintive but determined assertion when he is the last man standing against the pack of horned pachyderms. That refrain has never seemed more urgent or immediate than right now, proving that Rhinoceros has never been more relevant than it is today.
