Went and saw Rhinoceros last night at convergence. For those of you unfamiliar with this play, you can read about it on Wikipedia. What is of most interest is the background experiences of Ionesco as he grew and became a man, specifically, his Jewish ethnicity, an ethnicity which the Radical Right in Romania would begin to attack in 1930s under the guise of “illegal immigration” and “fraudulent citizenship.” These themes and ideas should be familiar, as, today, it is clear that they come from a very old playbook.

Convergence puts up a timely play, to be sure. What is an ostensibly sensible, refined, and cultured town (country? USA?) supposed to do when a rhinoceros appears and begins smashing things, killing a poor kitten, and destroying everything in his path? What, further, should said town do when its own sensible and refined citizens begin turning into rhinoceroses? They all begin to fit in, play along, and do what everyone else is doing. But events take a more ominous tone as the entire town begins to change. The arguments should sound familiar:

BOTARD: I never believe journalists. They’re all liars. I don’t need them to tell me what to think; I believe what I see with my own eyes. Speaking as a former teacher, I like things to be precise, scientifically valid; I’ve got a methodical mind.

BOTARD: Please forgive me, Mr. Papillon. But you can’t deny that the colour problem is one of the great stumbling blocks of our time.
DUDARD: I know that, we all know that, but it has nothing to do with …
BOTARD: It’s not an issue to be dismissed lightly, Mr. Dudard. The course of history has shown that racial prejudice …

BERENGER: You shouldn’t reject medical advice.
JEAN: Doctors invent illnesses that don’t exist.
BERENGER: They do it in good faith-just for the pleasure of looking after people.
JEAN: They invent illnesses, they invent them, I tell you.
BERENGER: Perhaps they do-but after they invent them they cure them.
JEAN: I only have confidence in veterinary surgeons.

Throughout, Ionesco uses syllogisms from a few side characters to expose the absurd logic that comes into play when people attempt to discuss what they believe and why. The insertion of these sections creates a meta-dialog with the audience as it can begin to see the nature of the conversations regarding sensible people transforming into rhinoceroses:

LOGICIAN: [to the OLD GENTLEMAN] Here is an example of a syllogism. The cat has four paws. Isidore and Fricot both have four paws. Therefore Isidore and Fricot are cats.
OLD GENTLEMAN: [to the LOGICIAN] My dog has got four paws.
LOGICIAN: [to the OLD GENTLEMAN] Then it’s a cat.

These absurd arguments become all-too-real as Berenger begins to see his own friends and co-workers transform into Rhinos.

JEAN: I tell you it’s not as bad as all that. After all, rhinoceroses are living creatures the same as us; they’ve got as much right to life as we have !
BERENGER: As long as they don’t destroy ours in the process. You must admit the difference in mentality.
JEAN: [pacing up and down the room, and in and out of the bathroom] Are you under the impression that our way of life is superior?
BERENGER: Well at any rate, we have our own moral standards which I consider incompatible with the standards of these animals.
JEAN: Moral standards! I’m sick of moral standards ! We need to go beyond moral standards !
BERENGER: What would you put in their place?
JEAN: [still pacing] Nature!
BERENGER: Nature?
JEAN: Nature has its own laws. Morality’s against Nature.
BERENGER: Are you suggesting we replace our moral laws by the law of the jungle?
JEAN: It would suit me, suit me fine.

One only need recall Charlottesville and the “fine young men” and their torches to see that greater numbers appear to be turning into rhinoceroses right in front of our eyes. Morality begins to unwind and transform to the Hobbesian “bellum omnium contra omnes”.

And soon, we see people begin to change what they believe, through the simple constant exposure to the ideas, accommodating things that were abhorrent:

DUDARD: What if you do? You only have to keep out of their way. And there aren’t as many as all that.
BERENGER: I see them all over the place. You’ll probably say that’s being morbid, too.
DUDARD: They don’t attack you. If you leave them alone, they just ignore you. You can’t say they’re spiteful. They’ve even got a certain natural innocence, a sort of frankness. Besides I walked right along the avenue to get to you today. I got here safe and sound, didn’t I? No trouble at all.
BERENGER: Just the sight of them upsets me. It’s a nervous thing. I don’t get angry–no, it doesn’t pay to get angry, you never know where it’ll lead to, I watch out for that. But it does something to me, here! [He points to his heart.] I get a tight feeling inside.
DUDARD: I think you’re right to a certain extent to have some reaction. But you go too far. You’ve no sense of humour, that’s your trouble, none at all. You must learn to be more detached, and try and see the funny side of things.
BERENGER: I feel responsible for everything that happens. I feel involved, I just can’t be indifferent.
DUDARD: Judge not lest ye he judged. If you start worrying about everything that happens you’d never be able to go on living.
BERENGER: If only it had happened somewhere else, in some other country, and we’d just read about it in the papers, one could discuss it quietly, examine the question from all points of view and come to an objective conclusion. We could organize debates with professors and writers and lawyers, and blue-stockings and artists and people. And the ordinary man in the street, as well-it would be very interesting and instructive. But when you’ re involved yourself, when you suddenly find yourself up against the brutal facts you can’t help feeling directly concerned-the shock is too violent for you to stay cool and detached. I’m frankly surprised, I’m very very surprised. I can’t get over it.
DUDARD: Well I’m surprised, too. Or rather I was. Now I’m starting to get used to it.

Things become more ominous, as Berenger and Daisy become the only humans left.

BERENGER: [darting to the radio] Let’s turn on the radio for the news!
DAISY: Yes, we must find out how things stand!
[The sound of trumpeting comes from the radio. BERENGER peremptorily switches it off. But in the distance other trumpetings, like echoes, can be heard.]
BERENGER: Things are getting really serious! I tell you frankly, I don’t like it!
[She is trembling.]
BERENGER: [very agitated] Keep calm! Keep calm!
DAISY: They’ve taken over the radio stations!
BERENGER: [agitated and trembling] Keep calm, keep calm!
[DAISY runs to the up-stage window, then to the down-stage window and looks out; BERENGER does the same in the opposite order, then the two come and face each other centre-stage.]
DAISY: It’s no joke any longer. They mean business!
BERENGER: There’s only them left now; nobody but them. Even the authorities have joined them.
[They cross to the windows as before, and meet again centre-stage.]
DAISY: Not a soul left anywhere.
BERENGER: We’re all alone, we’re left all alone.

Berenger attempts to save the world with Daisy, but even Daisy turns in the end, leaving Berenger all alone.

BERENGER: How can we save the world, if you don’t?
DAISY: Why bother to save it?
BERENGER: What a thing to say l Do it for me, Daisy. Let’s save the world.
DAISY: After all, perhaps it’s we who need saving. Perhaps we’re the abnormal ones.
BERENGER: You’re not yourself, Daisy, you’ve got a touch off ever.
DAISY: There aren’t any more of our kind about anywhere, are there?
BERENGER: Daisy, you’re not to talk like that!
[DAISY looks all around at the rhinoceros heads on the walls, on the landing door, and now starting to appear along the footlights.]
DAISY: Those are the real people. They look happy. They’re content to be what they are. They don’t look insane. They look very natural. They were right to do what they did.
BERENGER: [clasping his hands and looking despairingly at DAISY] We’re the ones who are doing right, Daisy, I assure you.
DAISY: That’s very presumptuous of you!
BERENGER: You know perfectly well I’m right.
DAISY: There’s no such thing as absolute right. It’s the world that’s right–not you and me.

To the end, when Berenger realizes that he alone must fight:

BERENGER: People who try to hang on to their individuality always come to a bad end! Oh well, too bad! I’ll take on the whole of them ! I’ll put up a fight against the lot of them, the whole lot of them! I’m the last man left, and I’m staying that way until the end. I’m not capitulating !

Once again, a timely play from convergence that was well-directed by Jonathan Wilhelm, with a fantastic set by Wilhelm as well—stark white set-pieces with black and white costumes, which stand in contrast to the muddled mess that humans make of belief and logic. Tom Kondilas is wonderful as the increasingly frantic Berenger, and he even rocks a ‘fro like Gene Wilder in the movie. It’s a long show, but definitely worth seeing.

The Realistic Jones

Why realistic Joneses? Perhaps the sidelong look at our neighbor has turned more to issues of plain old health and sanity rather than that of material wealth? Perhaps Eno is touching on the reality that many of us are floundering around in the same pool and that any aspirational measure of superiority—-or fear of inferiority-—has long given way to something much more frightening.

Both sets of male characters have a mysterious disease that causes pain, affects their vision, and undermines their memory. Dementia? Something else… But as memory is suspect, this affects virtually every aspect of each of the two male characters, making them impossible to trust. The blindness that each experiences, while certainly medically disconcerting, also points, metaphorically, to a troubling set of character issues—-certainly Oedipus would have a thing or two to say about the nature of blindness.

The characters, all around, are worth comparing because Eno uses two sets of couples—each in a similar set of circumstances (but at different ages). This sets up comparisons of gender relationships, age relationships, generational attitudes, as well as cross comparisons between how the couples work internally. The men, for instance, are predictably resistant to speaking about how they feel or what they feel, but mask it in different ways: the older male Jones—-Bob (Joel Hammer), resists talking at all about his feelings, fears, etc., mostly by gruff barking, harrumphing, or deflecting defensively—pushing any emotional engagement right back at his wife—-Jennifer (Tracee Patterson); the younger male Jones—-John (Chris Richards), resists talking about his feelings, fears, etc., by engaging in verbal puns, non sequiturs, and rhetorical question that, often as not, are barbed jabs at whomever else is around: a method that works remarkably well with his wife/girlfriend/significant other—-Pony (Rachel Zake), who is oblivious to nearly everything going on around her.

The characters are representations and commentaries on our current cultural condition. As funny as they may often be, it is a bit depressing. Pony, certainly, is cause for consternation. If her hold on reality and competence were to be judged by ten strands of hair, I’d say that nine of the strands were snapped already. Pony is flighty, airy, inconstant, and largely indifferent—-especially to anyone with a disease or health condition—-whom she’d prefer to avoid entirely. In short, Pony is very much a child. John, her SO, is overly confident and opinionated, though he immediately admits that his opinion are based on nothing and many not even be correct. It is my assumption then that Eno is pointing to something very frightening about our society: inattentive, unconcerned with truth, uncommitted, etc. And yet, despite these flaws, the pair of characters is human, emotionally vulnerable, and clearly hurting—-thus deserving of compassion.

Bob is battling his own mortality and reckoning with a disease progression that he cannot control and one that is not predictable. It is one thing to suffer from a disease whose progression is clear, with markers by which you can judge your own health or lack thereof. But when the disease is unpredictable, whose symptoms affect memory and, thus, personality, the effect is to shake one’s sense of self. Bob is angry, an anger that he levels on his wife, Jennifer. He is also defensive, and unwilling to even discuss his thoughts, fears, and emotions with his wife. On the whole, Bob is inconsiderate, cranky, and often just mean. He’s lucky, however, in the love of Jennifer, who is filled with empathy, and willing to tolerate much. Strangely, Bob finds his softer side with Pony, as well has interest in speaking about this thoughts, fears, and emotions, a fact that leads to an affair with Pony. It is likely Pony’s complete indifference that leads Bob to this attraction. The surreptitious relationship between Bob and Pony is not surprising, in that these two characters are the most self-involved and seemingly indifferent.

John suffers from the same malady as Bob, with the same set of unpredictable symptoms, however, in Pony, John has a “spouse” that is not empathetic at all. In fact, it is clear that John hasn’t even bothered to tell Pony what is happening to him, for fear that she will run away. Pony evinces no courage. Strangely, or perhaps predictably, this set of character flaws in Pony and Bob lead John and Jennifer to each other. Though they do not have a physical affair, one can argue that they do have an emotional affair. It is clear that John receives what he needs from Jennifer: compassion and empathy, and Jennifer receives from John what she does not get from Bob: a man who talks about his thoughts, fears, and emotions.

Eno does a masterful job revealing the more intimate nature of each of these characters by forcing each character, and the audience, to peel back (or hack off) the crusty exteriors to find the soft underside. The fact that Eno uses a small town on the edge of a mountain as his setting, as well as night encounters with plenty of star gazing, points explicitly to the “higher” nature of this play’s consideration. Often the play has that aspect that one can only get when staring up at the stars: a wistful sense of one’s smallness, an expansive sense of history, a confrontation with one’s mortality, a sense of God or the infinite. The external setting often leads to shocking statements in the midst of banal small talk.

I’ve seen two plays by Eno at Dobama: Thom Pain (Based on Nothing), and Middletown-—Eno’s response to Thorton Wilder’s Our Town. I’ve read others, including Tragedy: A Tragedy in New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York. In each play Eno is obsessed with the tenuous nature of meaning inherent in our language and how we understand or misunderstand others and the world around us, and the things happening within us: thoughts, emotions, etc. All of this is rife in The Realistic Joneses. Virtually every statement by John, for instance, is undermined in the next statement, sometimes within the same sentence. An example, when the couples are parting ways at the end of scene one, might shed a bit of light, when John says: “This was fun. I mean, not fun, but definitely some other word.”

Some other word. That might be the best description of this play, or any of Eno’s plays. The quote might be, “I’m telling you something important, something vitally important; but not really important, maybe trivial, in fact. I’m not sure.” Thom Pain is one hour and ten minutes of savagery that is similar to this: a brutal search for meaning, for something real, that may or may not quite come to be. It’s as if Eno’s characters are frantically searching through a sand drift for something lost, but they can’t quite remember what it was, and maybe he or she finds something else.