Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #235545 in Books
• Published on: 1994-01-11
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

Audacious Absurdity
Every time I read an absurdist play, I feel the typical symptoms: confusion, isolation, annoyance, and enlightment. Ionesco did not fail to dissapoint. That is he did not fail to deliver a play in pure absurdist form. Although the absurd structure is not easy to identify, one can always pinpoint it. Reading these play I heard many questions being asked: "how do humans fulfill their essence?", "is it necessary to commit to an ideal in order for life to have meaning?". These questions alone made it easy to distinguish what kind of plays these were about.
Ionesco sets forth plays questioning the appeal of power and beauty and its detrimental effects on human nature, more specifically with "Rhinocerous". I have heard many people say that this play deals mainly with the concept of human conformity, but is it really conformity when humans are drawn to an ideal and desire to portray it. Is power, beauty and love a form of conformity, or human nature? Are the Rhinoceri a representation of human nature in its purest state, or human nature gone awry?

A classic reconsidered
Perhaps it has to do with time, but I think Rhinoceros reads better from a perspective other than the one having to do with fascism. I chose to direct it recently from a very different point of view and one, I think, that would facilitate a bristling reading. The play is not about fascism per se, but rather about the rigidity of social convention, which was one of Ionesco's concerns. Just listen to Jean's constant criticisms of Berenger's appearance and behavior. The first time the Rhinoceroses appear, Berenger has had enough of Jean and is, wishfully thinking, wishing ill upon him. Why a Rhinoceros? Perhaps because Jean is so prissy; perhaps Berenger wishes he was thick-skinned enough to shrug off Jean's derision. The first act ends, indeed, with an argument between the two. Think of the appearance of the Rhino in the second act as an unconcsious working out of his wishful thinking: Jean is replaced by the insulting and condescending Dudard. Either Berenger misfires or he is testing--through Mrs Boeff--whether love can withstand "Rhinoceritis". It appears it can. Notice his conversations with Daisy. Read Act Three as Berenger taunting, harassing, and inflicting Rhinoceritis upon Jean in a kind of coup de grace, separating himself completely from Jean and the conventions he stands for. In the fourth act, however, we see the daydream get out of his control because, as Jean told us in the beginning, Berenger's thinking is all muddled; Daisy catches the 'disease' as she tries to win or seduce him, but he himself is, ironically, immune or a coward. Ionesco, of course, is richer than a simplistic point a view; but as Jean, again, tells us in the beginning, Berenger is a dreamer, and examining Berenger's state of mind as the cause of the rampant and rampaging outbreak of Rhinoceritis makes for a comic and tragic reading and very entertainig piece of theatre.

Dated Translation
Ionesco is one of the greatest of the absurdist playwrights. Rhinoceros is a great piece -- an amalgam of comedy and tragedy that will have you doubled over in laughter one moment and desperately frightened the next.

That being said, this translation has some serious problems. It was very strange to read as an American in 2004, because it is written in the English spoken in Great Britain in the 1960s. In addition to serious liberties taken by the translator (i.e. simply leaving out certain lines), there sometimes crops up a lack of flow that is all too common in translated literature.

Despite the fact that it's time for a new translation, I highly recommend Ionesco's plays, and Rhinoceros in particular. If you know French, read the original!