Benedict Cumberbatch & Jasper Britton in Rhinoceros
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Review Round-up: How Do Critics Ride Rhinoceros?

Eugene Ionesco’s early Absurdist play Rhinoceros received its first major UK revival last night (27 September 2007, previews from 21 September) at the Royal Court, where it continues until 15 December, directed by artistic director Dominic Cooke. From 6 November (previews from 1 November), it will run in repertory with Ramin Gray’s revival of Max Frisch’s The Arsonists, performed by the same company.

That company is led by Benedict Cumberbatch who, in Ionesco’s satire on conformity, plays Berenger, a man whose entire world is threatened when herds of rhinoceroses start thundering through town. He’s joined by Jasper Britton, Zawe Ashton, Michael Begley, Paul Chahidi, Jacqueline Defferary, David Hinton, Lloyd Hutchinson, Claire Prempeh, Alwyne Taylor and Graham Turner.

In the Jerwood Theatre Downtairs, the plays by Romanian-born Frenchman Ionesco and the Swiss Frisch form the cornerstone of the Royal Court’s internationally themed autumn season. The International Playwrights Season runs concurrently in the smaller Jerwood Theatre Upstairs with five new plays by writers from Germany, Romania, India, Sweden and Ukraine.

Rhinoceros had its Royal Court premiere in a 1960 production directed by Orson Welles and starring Laurence Olivier. The Arsonists (then under the title of The Fire Raisers) premiered at the Court a year later, directed by Lindsay Anderson with Alfred Marks and John Thaw in the cast.

While overnight critics are self-confessed fans of Dominic Cooke and the changes he’s effected at the Royal Court since taking over as artistic director earlier this year, they’re less sure about the merits of Ionesco’s play, which some considered dated, dull and predictable – despite Martin Crimp’s “wittily amusing” new translation. However, there was praise for Cooke’s “exemplary” production values and for many of the performances, particularly that of Jasper Britton, whose physically robust, second-act rhinocerisation was declared the evening’s highlight.

Paul Taylor in the Independent – “Dominic Cooke has just the genius and kick that this venue needs. We seem, thrillingly, to be re-entering the era of Stephen Daldry. It's fist-bitingly exciting. All the same, why are we being subjected to Rhinoceros? … It feels to me flat-out mistake. It's an act of piety, to be sure. Ionesco's play was one of the first shows to be put on at Court. It's quite brilliantly directed. Cooke strikes me as possibly the most gifted director in the country (equally able in the classics and new work). And yet not even his flair can rescues a play that seems dated and dead … Cooke's stunning production … whips up the tension brilliantly, with its off-stage suggestion of a stampede. It's lucid, expertly orchestrated and yet the play, an Absurdist fable about the pressure to conform (Fascist, Communist, you name it) has not survived its own occasion. Benedict Cumberbatch is marvellous in the lead. Cooke is a great actors' director and he releases something in Cumberbatch we have not seen before … I was impressed and bored.”

- by Terri Paddock

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	Rhinoceros - 28th Sep 2007 reviews