In Rhinoceros, John Turturro and Paul Giamatti display how a community can talk itself out of its own humanity. By the time Giamatti sheds his shirt and starts snorting, you’ll understand why Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 play about the cost of conformity still lands like a gut punch.
Director Diane Paulus’s adaptation, based on Derek Prouse’s translation, at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater treats Ionesco’s absurdism like a live wire. The play arrives as the questions Ionesco asked in the wake of World War II—who joins the herd, and why—feel uncomfortably relevant.
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Giamatti sheds his pajamas and his humanity
Turturro’s Bérenger, an under-achieving office clerk who can’t quite get his life together, faces off against Giamatti’s Jean, the friend who never lets him forget it. Their comedic dynamic and physical intimacy is stunning to witness, especially as Jean later turns into a rhinoceros before our eyes.
Rather than resorting to visual gimmicks, Giamatti strips off his pajama top, snarls and snorts and humps his co-star. Sound designer Fitz Patton is critical to the transformation, creating otherworldly vocal effects that make Giamatti’s modulated voice sound as if he’s battling demonic possession.
Tatiana Maslany’s Daisy is a bright light and holds her own as Bérenger’s love interest, while Kristine Nielsen brings her eccentric genius in dual roles as the Grocer’s Wife and ultimately as a zany Mrs. Boeuf.
When an office skeptic who refuses to believe his own eyes advises, “We must move with the times,” or another of Bérenger’s coworkers angling for a promotion later asks whether good and evil can become matters of “personal preferences,” one may be tempted to apply this to all progressive contemporary views rather than to the fascism Ionesco critiqued—which would be a misreading.
Yet, for anyone who’s had close friends or family members become unrecognizable over the past decades because of political extremism—and grappled with how to breach that gulf in values—Rhinoceros will make sense of the absurdity of our current times. It deserves to be seen by an even larger audience, and here’s hoping it makes its way to a New York City stage soon.
Is ‘Rhinoceros’ worth seeing?
If you’ve watched someone you love turn into a stranger over politics, Rhinoceros gets it in this searing new adaptation.
- Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street, Cambridge
- Notable performers: John Turturro, Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, Kristine Nielsen
- Running time: Two hours including one intermission
- Performances through September 27, 2026
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