RHINOCEROS

About the show

Eugène Ionesco's highly comic and profound play premiered in Düsseldorf over 60 years ago, making the Schauspielhaus an important stage for the author. In "Rhinoceros," he depicts the metamorphosis of an entire society. The citizens of a small town gradually exchange their unremarkable human existence for a life as powerful pachyderms—they become rhinoceroses. What initially causes bewilderment or even horror among the population soon becomes attractive and desirable. Only the office worker Bérenger resists the rampant rhino-itis, while everyone around him—perfectly ordinary people—gradually succumbs. Bérenger's best friend, Jean, discredits clinging to humanism and the value system of human civilization as "silly sentimentality of yesteryear." His colleagues deny the danger posed by the rhinoceroses and welcome the transformation of the masses as a natural and necessary development. How are the signs of the times to be interpreted? Who defines what is right and what is wrong? And how does the majority in a society deal with minorities, with people like Bérenger, who don't go with the flow, who don't want to turn into cattle?