A review by cantordustbunnies
Rhinoceros and Other Plays: Includes: The Leader; The Future Is in Eggs; It Takes All Kinds to Make a World by Eugène Ionesco

3.0

A misanthropic collection of plays in which people are portrayed as being easily influenced by each other and the only thing more dumb than the individual is the collective. Ionesco's usage of the absurd/surreal makes the tone more playful than bitter though. There's a hallucinatory quality to these works which a director could certainly play on to great effect and under the correct conditions they could be a great mixture of funny and disturbing. Ultimately I found them to be highfalutin in a snotty, hipster, academic kind of way which admittedly isn't always a bad thing. They're entertaining as quirky oddities but unless if you have some special interest in avant-garde theatre I wouldn't say that they're especially memorable to read. I think a lot of their appeal and impact depends upon how they are staged. I appreciate anyone who is willing to step outside the box and take risks and there is something interesting and likeable about these plays, they make me feel inspired to translate them on to stage. I'm torn between thinking they’re pretentious and embarrassingly eccentric or darkly comic and ahead of their time.