growing horns
by Douglas Messerli
Eugène Ionesco Rhinocéros / performed by the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Royce
Hall, University of California, Los Angeles / the performance I saw was on
September 22, 2012
Although I read Ionesco’s acclaimed
play when it was first published in English in the early 1960s, I had never
seen a theatrical production of the work (and only clips from the 1974 American
film), so I jumped at the chance of attending the performance at UCLA’s Royce
Hall by the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris in French (with English language
subtitles).
Yet, I left the theater, despite having finally seen one of the best
plays by one of my favorite playwrights, slightly disappointed. That sometimes
happens, even at brilliant productions: one is tired or slightly distracted for
reasons other than the play one is observing. Here, part of the problem simply
lay in the fact the distance between the translation board and the stage was
vast enough that it was hard to follow the stage action and still read the
English, and the constant vertical motion of the eyes often distracted me.
More importantly, however, is that Ionesco’s play, often touted as his
best, is a parable that, once it has asserted its major premise has little
place else to go. Los Angeles Times critic
Charles McNulty quoted Kenneth Tynan: Ionesco is "a brilliant, anarchic
sprinter unfitted by temperament for the steady, provident mountaineering of
the three-act form." Also, having seen this production, I now wonder
whether other plays such as his early short works (including the unforgettable The Chairs) and later works such as The Killer and Exit the King are not simply more profound works. At the heart of Rhinoceros is an important but quite
simple warning of cultural conformity, and in the wake of World War II (the
play was written, we must remember, just over a decade after the end of the
war) Ionesco’s Rhinoceri—whether two horned or one—perfectly encapsulated the
cultural betrayal of everyday citizens who suddenly embraced Fascism and
Nazism.
And there are numerous other moments of excellent performance,
particularly in Bérenger’s speeches and the logician’s perfectly absurd
discussion of the difference between African and Asian rhincoeri. Yet, in perhaps
the most important scene of the play, as the sensitive Jean (Hugues Quester in
this production)—completely opposed to the rhinoceri transformations—gradually
is transformed into just a beast, the work loses focus as he is transformed
behind a plastic door where we see only the outlines of his facial shifts. As I
mentioned previously, I did not see Zero Mostel’s 1961 rendition of Jean, but
in the movie and in descriptions of his New York performance I recognize
significant differences which made this early interpretation, a true theatrical
wonder. In a fascinating article in the Jewish
Daily Forward by Mostel’s nephew, Raphael Mostel describes the events
behind the Broadway production:
The scene Z is most remembered
for in this play is the
one in which he
transformed into a rhinoceros. Ionesco had
envisioned the
transformation happening behind a curtain,
and the actor bursting
through with a rhino mask. But Z
could perform the most
astonishing physical feats — whether
reducing Johnny Carson to
hysterics by placing a proffered
cigarette on his brow and
somehow getting it to roll all around
his face until it fell
into his mouth like a pinball machine, or
doing a Dada-like
imitation of a coffee percolator. And he
wanted to make the
frightening transformation with his face
and body in full view of
the audience.
As reviewer
Jack Kroll wrote of that performance in Newsweek: “Something
unbelievable happened. A fat comedian named Zero Mostel gave a performance that
was even more astonishing than [Laurence] Olivier’s” (Olivier had performed the
role in London).
Just such an “astonishing” individual
performance is what is missing in this otherwise capable French rendition. One
might even suggest that few companies could have better portrayed the kind of
mass hysteria which is at the heart of Ionesco’s play. But, as Bérenger, himself ponders, it is not
just the masses wherein these transformations are taking place, but in the
individual hearts. Jean stood against the rhinoceros invasion at the very
moment he begins to grow, in his very reasonableness, more and more lenient.
Even while attacking the beasts, he grows more and more sympathetic to their
plight, to their odd differences. And in that very allowance of human empathy
he is himself destroyed. That is perhaps a more frightening statement than the
fact that some individuals have turned into beasts, the idea that one cannot
ever permit the thought that there may be some good in these transformations
actually allows the transformations to take place. And seeing that struggle up
close and in person is crucial to the structure of the play.
In the end Bérenger is left alone, like
Miles Bennell in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with no one to tell his
tale to except, perhaps, the audience. And it is we who must determine,
accordingly, whether he is mad or sane.
Demarcy-Mota’s production focused more on
the chorus, all of whom allowed the transformation to occur, than upon that man
set apart. But then, that is part of the problem with Ionesco’s engaging
parable; it is more fun to watch a pack of charging rhinocerori than a
non-capitulating loner shouting abuses at them.
Los Angeles, October 5, 2012
Reprinted from USTheater,
Opera and Performance (October 2012).
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