The scene requires Jean to become a rhino before our eyes, and Stephen Murray’s virtuosic performance of the transformation - braying, charging, roaring, snorting, scaring the daylights out of Berenger - is among the show’s acting highlights. When Berenger visits Jean’s home to check in on him, he finds a troubling sight: Jean’s skin is turning green and a bump has begun on his forehead. It is interrupted by the offstage crash of a rhino’s demolition of the stairway, which forces the terrified coworkers to escape via the window down a fire-department ladder. In fact, the character becomes increasingly interesting in Myers’s quick-witted performance, which remains appealing and sympathetic throughout.Ī scene looking at the office work world that numbs Berenger comes next. Berenger does not disagree, but in his own defense tells how uncomfortable he is with his brain-dulling, burdensome life.īerenger’s character arc during the play is what holds it together - he begins as a hot mess and in the end transforms into a quasi-hero - so the choice to cross-gender-cast the crucial role does not escape attention. He’s joined by his snide friend Jean (James Raymond), who berates Beringer for being disheveled, drunk, weak-willed, and a disgrace. Here we meet the play’s main character, a man named Berenger (Mary Myers). Stephen Murray as Jean and Mary Myers as Berenger in ‘Rhinocéros!’ Photos by Hailey LaRoe.įollowing a lovely pre-show soundtrack of Edith Piaf, the first scene is set in a quaint French café (designed by James Raymond), peopled by patrons, passersby, and staff in colorful cartoonlike costumes (Kitt Crescenzo). And the masked rhino ensemble sequence at the top of Act Two is a reward worth returning from intermission for. The rhino sound design alone is so artful - earth-shaking stomps, impact crashes, trumpeting and roaring, horns and even a sax - that it almost becomes another character. The rhino interludes are done so fun one looks forward to them. Ionesco’s script is structured around multiple topics in a series of less-than-scintillating scenes separated by extremely loud and arresting incidents of rhino invasion - signaled in the Pointless production by eyepopping lighting (Hailey Laroe), pounding sound (Aj Johnson), and ingenious puppets (Jess Rassp). There’s plenty of time during the play to muse on that. Pointless Theatre has just opened an intermittently diverting production of it with a new translation and direction by Frank Labovitz, and the experience of watching it prompts a provocative question: Just who are the rhinoceroses of today? When written, the play was an allegory about gullibility to Fascism and Nazism before and during World War II. The townsfolk are terrified yet fascinated, and one by one they succumb to group-think and turn into rhinos themselves. In Ionesco’s 1950 absurdist dark comedy, Rhinocéros, set in a small French town, the titular pachyderms start showing up and stampeding about, first one then another, eventually becoming a thundering herd. One’s mind can easily wander wondering what the rhinos mean.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |