Rhino

Boxcar Theatre presents
Rhino
Inspired by Eugène Ionesco's Rhinoceros
Imagined and Directed by Evren Odcikin

Cast
B: El Beh
D: Allison Combs
Eugène: Ross Pasquale
Lucy Williams/The Cat Lady: Erin Gilley

Sat 29 May 2010 8pm

This show wasn't on my radar until I saw an article about the origami-inspired rhinoceros masks made by Amy Knight for this production. I made it to closing night & had fun checking out the rhino heads for myself. There are about 10 such masks, either worn by the actors or hanging on the walls & illuminated from within. They are made out of stiff buckram, may have either one or two horns, & each is different. They were easily my favorite element of the show.

The show itself is a very free adaptation of Ionesco's Rhinoceros. It was so free that I did not get a sense of the original at all. The characters were a bourgeois couple, a man in pajamas, who I assume is supposed to be Ionesco, a BBC announcer & a lady whose cat is killed by a rhino. Besides playing the male half of the couple, El Bel also provided live music on the cello. Her unexpectedly fluent playing was my favorite part of her performance.

Instead of being seated in an auditorium, the audience stands & moves around the small black box theater for the show's hour-long duration. One never knows where the next scene will take place, & a couple of times actors bumped into me as they moved through the audience. One lady was hit in the head by a stuffed cat kicked around by one of the characters. Director Evren Odcikin made the pre-show announcements in the lobby before letting us all in at once for the start of the show.