Brandy Lamkin, Sarah Galarneau, Ari Wojciech, Mandi Thomas, Carl Lyons, Sadie Sieroty, Ruchi Kishore (Photo by Tyler Manley)
Reviewed by F. Kathleen Foley
The Insomniacs at the Stella Adler Theater
Through August 25
Like his earlier plays, beginning with The Bald Soprano, Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, first produced in 1959, broke the mold of the conventional theatrical form.
Heralded as a classic of absurdism, Rhinoceros has been interpreted as an allegory of fascism and the danger of mindless conformity. Raised in both France and Romania, Ionesco experienced authoritarian tyranny firsthand with the rise of the brutally anti-Semitic Iron Guard in Bucharest, which seduced the top intellectuals of the country with their poisonously doctrinaire creed.
Appalled by the Iron Guard and their pogroms against the country’s Jews, Ionesco filtered his early brush with fascism into Rhinoceros, a comically elliptical play with a strong undercurrent of dread. The play features the everyman character of Berenger (also the protagonist of three other Ionesco plays, most notably Exit the King).
The premise, of course, is that the inhabitants of a French village are transformed into bellowing, stampeding rhinoceroses — an inexplicable “plague” that subsumes all in the rising bestial tide. All, that is, except Berenger, a disheveled, self-doubting drunkard who emerges as the unlikely champion of humanity itself. He is, quite literally, the last man standing.
The play’s illustrious reputation notwithstanding, the current production by The Insomniacs at the Stella Adler Theater is a bit of a slog. Director Taylor Wuthrich and a conscientious cast give it their all, but never quite tap into the play’s essentially Gallic rhythms and playfulness.
Wuthrich tries to lighten the action with puppets, interstitial dance, and mime sequences. The dire sounds of rhinoceroses thundering through the streets are courtesy of Andy Walsh’s excellent sound design.
The characters, on the surface at least, are caricatures — overblown and obvious. However, many in the cast burlesque their roles in overly broad performances, instead of delving for potential depth and subtlety.
In the lynchpin role of Berenger, Neal Honda has an attractively hangdog quality but never quite ascends from schlub to hero — a requisite transition. Nick Scutti fares better as Berenger’s best friend Jean, whose no-holds-barred transformation into a thrashing, rampaging rhino leaves him — and us — breathless. As the curmudgeonly conspiracy theorist Botard, Mandi Thomas, in drag, delivers her lines in such a roaring masculinized growl we fear her vocal cords won’t last the run.
Parallels to the plot and our current political climate are rife. A mouthpiece for arch-conservatism, Botard initially insists that early reports of rhinoceros sightings are a plot — fake news, in fact. On the other hand, the mindlessly “woke” and liberal Dudard (Ari Wojciech), Berenger’s friend and co-worker, accepts the destroying “others” with little hesitation. The character of the Logician (Nika Belinsky), introduces a touch of Carrollian nonsense with ludicrously faulty syllogisms — but that, too, is Ionesco’s wily warning against the perils of unquestioning belief.
Despite the limitations of the production, it’s still great fun to ferret out the undercurrents in this timely play — a reminder that Ionesco’s enduring reputation as a theatrical provocateur is well-warranted.
The Stella Adler Theater, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles. Fri.-Sat., 8 pm, Sun., 2 pm; thru Aug. 25. No performances Aug. 16-18. https://insomniacs.booktix.com/ Running time: approximately two hours and 15 minutes with an intermission.
