When I was a young lad, my parents & their parent friends would take all their combined kids to the theater a few times a year, in order to expose us to Culture. I had to admit, I did like a lot of the things we saw, but one particular production sticks out in my mind as especially bizarre. IIRC it was simply entitled Rhinoceros.
The premise of the play was that normal everyday folks were suddenly, inexplicably turning into rhinoceros-es (rhinoceri ??). At the beginning of the play, it’s a weird freak thing that spooks everyone. But as more and more people start changing, people become used to it, then intrigued, and even envious. Finally, folks start deliberately turning into rhinos. The main character is a bohemian artist type who resists turning into a rhino, and is finally the only human being left. He mulls over becoming a rhino just because he doesn’t want to be the only human being left. But finally, he chooses to remain human, even if he’s the only one.
Naturally enough, the transformations into rhinos takes place off-stage. The audience only heard the sound of rumbling come from the back of the theater to suggest Rhinos barreliing by.
The play was, well, weird. Aside from the main storyline, there is a scene in which two ‘philosophers’ sit in a cafe and use syllogisms to prove that they are respectively, a dog & a cat, and that all cats are dogs. (Or something to that effect. I was 10 when I saw the play, so my memory could be spotty.)
Dunno who wrote the play. I’ve tried googling it, but I haven’t turned up any leads. My mother doesn’t remember taking my brothers & me to it. Any one know anything about it?
There’s a film version starring the great Zero Mostel.
The script, if you want to buy it, is available through Samuel French for six and half bucks.
Apparently it is. I googled a few times and only got African wildlife photos.
Reading the synopsis jogged my memory of several scenes. I had forgotten about the scene in the office. I remember that the fire department had to come to the rescue of the office workers, and that when it was his turn, Berenger leapt into the arms of the firmeman. The fireman was stumbling around the stage trying to hold Berenger, who kept resisting actually leaving because he was trying to get the last word in on the argument he’d been having. It was quite funny in a Carol Burnett slapstick sort of way. :0
I had no idea there was a film version.
Well, thanks for the links.
Actually I just realized you’re in NYC. You can just go to their store at 45 W. 25th (btw. 6th and B’way) and pick it up.
And that’s not far away from where I work! I’ll check it out. 
Eugene Ionesco, who wrote it, was a great playwright and one of the cornerstones of the Theater of the Absurd. Rhinoceros is probably his best play, but The Chairs and The Bald Soprano are also quite good.
There’s also a 1964 animated version of it, which I’ve seen. It’s not on the IMDB, but here’s a notice of it:
http://www.untitledtheater.com/Films.html
It’s pretty minimalist, with no dialogue, and running pretty short. A minimalist absurdist drama is pretty far out.
I saw it a long time ago at the U. of Evansville. I gathered it had to do with the nature of fear and panic. Perhaps it was related to the red scares and McCarthyism. Much of it was a complete mystery to me.
Well, when I saw it back in high school, the meaning was crystal clear: it’s a condemnation of conformity, especially the end, when the main character is wondering if he should become a rhinoceros himself.
That brings back memories. I remember doing some of it in French classes at school.
I love this play. The Zero Mostel/Gene Wilder/Karen Black movie is pretty good, and I also saw it performed in college…this incredible dork played Berenger, which was okay, as Berenger is a bit of a dork, and Daisy was done by a famously slutty co-ed who was well-known for walking around campus with just a thin gauze covering her pussy (<-- exaggeration).
She wore a variety of extremely tight dresses in the show. A friend said she stole every scene in the play just by bending over.
IIRC, there was mention of it in Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. I’d thought it was a fictional work, though, until now.
I love Rhinoceros–it’s a great play! IIRC, it’s a condemnation of the fascist takeover of intellectuals in Europe, how at first the fascists are scary brutes, but once it becomes clear that they’re spreading, everyone finds torturous ways to convince themselves that it’d be a good, noble, beautiful thing to become a fascist.
The Bald Sopranist is similarly weird and hilarious. “How very strange, how bizarre, and what a coincidence!” was kind of a catch phrase with me and my housemates for awhile.
Daniel
Is anyone else seeing a Google ad for Gorilla-Snot Dust Control?
Talk about absurd.
Hey! I remember seeing that movie with my first husband!
He was a huge Zero Mostel fan.
I was almost obsessed with Ionesco in high school; I even managed to convince our theater department to stage The Bald Soprano. I played the policeman.
I read this in HS for my Literature of the Absurd class. I remember nothing but the title and the name of the playwright. Glad you enjoyed it. Sadly, even the synopsis posted here triggers no recollection for me. And to think I was once an articulate, cultured person. Now I am an Ionesco play!
