For Ionesco it was about the rise of Fascism, but as the pachydermal herd lacks a leader, it remains topical – a comic-serious riff on joining the pack, the latest fashion, the current opinion Théâtre de la Ville parades its Ionesco on a bigger scale with an ensemble of 13 and elaborate mobile sets by Yves Collet which are artworks in themselves – but all in the cause of illuminating Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota’s initially fast-moving production which keeps the fable of Rhinocéros simple yet ambiguous. Our long runner is The Mousetrap Paris's is a double bill of Ionesco’s The Bald Primadonna and The Lesson, still to be seen at the tiny Théâtre de la Huchette 61 years after their first performances there. But the Théâtre de la Ville-Paris’s clockwork precision and sure sense of pace do take us to the dark heart of a great play.Įlaborate mobile sets by Yves Collet are artworks in themselvesThe Parisians continue to keep Ionesco in the forefront of the dramatic repertoire while London theatre merely defers to his example in the abstract. I laughed rather less at a production which sometimes squashes the Romanian’s absurdist black humour under elegant French feet. I laughed a lot, too, reading Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinocéros. It’s even funnier when you learn that admirer Robert Rauschenberg, about to pinch a couple of cubes on a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the late 1950s, was told by the guard, “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to touch that crap?”
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