Omar Elerian clearly has an aptitude, and appetite, for European absurdism. The director and translator staged an impeccable revival of Eugène Ionesco’s The Chairs three years ago at the Almeida, complete with the masterstroke casting of husband-and-wife duo Kathryn Hunter and the late Marcello Magni.
Now comes his version of Ionesco’s magnum opus about the dangers of conformity. This might or might not be set in Ionesco’s provincial French town in which Berenger (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) becomes the hapless witness of a malaise in which humans are turning into rhinoceroses. It is dismally timely in a world of rising rightwing authoritarianism, with its critique of passivity in the face of barbarism and herd-like conformity.
