A terrific show or an excruciating show off?
Almeida Theatre
The critics agreed that director Omar Elerian has taken Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist comedy about conformity by the scruff of the neck and added all kinds of funny business. They then divided between those who thought this was a show to be savoured or was simply showing off. Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, best known for Gangs of London, leads a cast who relish the comedy.
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4 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑
‘(T)his revival of Eugène Ionesco’s playfully absurd 1959 drama is terrific,’ said Nick Curtis in the Standard. He found this version ‘has a knowing wit and a Pythonesque surrealism. It’s lo-fi and technically precise at the same time. True, it starts to drag some time before the end, but then Elerian pulls off a truly devastating final image.’
Time Out’s Andrzej Lukowski said, ‘Adaptor-director Elerian’s take both deconstructs Ionesco and feels reverentially respectful to him. Excerpts from books about him are literally read out, so we all know how great Ionesco was. His stage directions are read out. And indeed, Brecht looms equally large here – Elerian never lets you forget for a second that you’re watching a play, but never stops having fun reminding you.’
Aleks Sierks at TheArtsDesk agreed that Omar Elerian ‘provides an excitingly wild new version of this classic political play.’ He wrote, ‘Elerian takes this story and both restages it, and deconstructs it. Mixing Brechtian devices with the absurdist text, he has characters who are a deliberate affront to naturalism: they look like cartoons, their hair stands on end, they act oddly.’
For The Independent’s Alice Saville, ‘A production like this is a rare beast on London’s stages – with its gleeful non-naturalism, witty physical theatre and tooting kazoos – and it deserves to be appreciated.’
The Observer’s Susannah Clapp pointed out: ‘Insisting on the one theme without ever quite making an argument, Rhinoceros can easily become both heavy-footed and elusive: a pachyderm peeping flirtatiously from behind a fan. And yet. Here is Omar Elerian’s production, making the play seem weirdly true.’
3 stars ⭑⭑⭑
Sarah Crompton in WhatsOnStage, having described in detail all the extra funny business, decided it ‘sets its humour around it, rather than arising from the script’. She noted, ‘it’s up to Dìrísù to hold the centre of the play, and he does so with a befuddled gravity, a constant sense of slow-moving bemusement as he attempts to understand why the world sees something so differently from him.’
The Times’ Clive Davis decided it was ‘all quite entertaining in its manic way, except that the newly devised material pushes the running time well beyond the two-and-a-half-hour mark and leaves you even more aware of the fact that the original text itself is slender stuff. Yes, you can take it as an allegory on conformism, as Elerian does in the programme notes, but all the circular wordplay, the chit-chat about syllogisms and whether Socrates was a cat, soon begins to pall.’
’it’s the stuff of appreciative applause, and ticked-off checklists, not headline-making ovations,’ declared The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish. Anya Ryan for LondonTheatre was impressed that ‘even today, this play digs into society’s darkness and humanity’s weakness.’
2 stars ⭑⭑
The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar thought it was ‘too clever, teeming with good ideas, but slack in pace and tone.’
Alexander Cohen at BroadwayWorld didn’t like the direction: ‘His brand of maximalist metatheatre greedily hogs the limelight, a crusade to deconstruct Rhinoceros within an inch of its life.’ He didn’t hold back: ‘My interpretation of Rhinoceros for 2025: the rhinoceroses are theatre directors, one by one transforming into Avant Garde-ists whose continental inspired anti-theatre relentlessly prioritises style over substance.’
The Stage’s Sam Marlowe was equally unequivocal in her reaction: ‘it is overlong, self-indulgent and entirely lacking in any sense of menace or jeopardy to offset its fantastical antics.’ In case she hadn’t made herself clear, she concluded: ‘This material requires far more nimbleness and a much defter touch. As it is, it’s excruciating.’
Critics’ Average Rating 3.2✭
Rhinoceros can be seen at The Almeida until 26 April 2025. Click here to buy direct from the theatre
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