You’re having a quiet lunch with your best friend at a charming little restaurant in your hometown, when suddenly, a passerby morphs into a rhinoceros. As you stare in disbelief, it stampedes through the restaurant, destroying everything in its path.
Incredible? Most certainly. Absurd? Yes. In fact, the play Rhinoceros, by Eugene Ionesco is the most famous of its genre, Theatre of the Absurd. When it ran on Broadway for 240 performances, it garnered Zero Mostel the Best Actor Tony Award, in 1961.
As the play progresses, more and more rhinoceroses are sighted in town and you gradually begin to realize that the entire population is turning into these huge pachyderms. More alarming still is that everyone that you count on to "remain" human seems to be switching to rhinoceros form too, and destroying everything in their path. But, insidiously, as more humans become beasts, the remaining humans begin to excuse the rhino’s behavior, conforming, accepting, and transforming, until only one person is left who resists the horror. You. Determined not to conform, but as the human numbers dwindle and the rhinoceros population soars, will you be able to resist?
Although the play was set in France and had strong political and historical connotations about the Nazi occupation, it seems to have a profound relevance today. It starts out as a slapstick comedy of manners, but this is Ionesco's way of softening us up so we're more vulnerable to the horrific elements later on. It ends a tragedy. Those of you who enjoyed Dr. Strangelove and Brazil may get a charge out of this.
Consider this: If, ten years ago, a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America had openly insulted handicapped people, veterans of the armed forces, bragged about sexually assaulting women, and refused to reveal his tax records, would that person have had a snowball’s chance of being elected? No. But because we are being numbed to one obscene atrocity after another, one bald-faced lie after another, our sense of what is normal, acceptable, and decent human behavior is becoming lost in the noise.
Rhinoceros may be an absurd play, but our current political scene is more like a living nightmare.
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