Eugene Ionesco’s 1959 play Rhinoceros will be in theatres again as the Award-winning LUXE company will be presenting the classic. This piece will be reimagined so that it reflects the current political climate and will feature a combination of liver performances, videos, film and debates that will be directed by the LUXE Founder and Artistic Director Cradeaux Alexander. The production has been renamed the Rhino, to reflect the adaptations for the modern day.
The play will be staged at the Bow Arts in their outdoor courtyard which is surrounded by the company’s warehouse studios. This new play comes after the sell-out production of Picasso’s Desire Caught by the Tail which ran in the summer. This production features on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row as well as The Evening Standard’s Going Out segment.
Rhino will be set around a sound stage and look at the aesthetics of a televised political debate as well as other behind the scene intimacies. Its characters will be confronted with the impossible question, is the world becoming a rhino? The production will expand the definition of play as the performers will be able to hear and see the audience in a way that privileges the locus with the real-time space of performers inside the immediate circumstance of their audience. The company has said that they like to perform so close to the audience. The play itself will move between times and traditional drama by using televisual spaces. In essence, Rhino will also be accessible through online videos, documentation and films.
Ionesco’s original piece is a hallmark of the Theatre of the Absurd, with equal parts drama, romance and a political statement through the warning around the allure of Fascism. This can be related to modern day with the sweep of populist movements that are reminiscent of the 1930s.
Tickets are £12 or £10 for concessions, and the play will run on Friday and Saturday the 7th/ 8th of April and Thursday and Friday the 27th/28th April at 7pm.
