Yale Rep presents Ionesco's "Rhinoceros," directed by Liz Diamond, March 6-28

Press release

YALE REPERTORY THEATRE PRESENTS EUGENE IONESCO’S TRAGICOMIC MASTERPIECE, RHINOCEROS, DIRECTED BY LIZ DIAMOND, MARCH 6–28


Cast is led by Reg Rogers as Berenger, the unlikely face of resistance to a society losing its humanity, and also includes Will Dagger, Jeremy A. Fuentes, Nicole Michelle Haskins, Richard Ruiz Henry, Dorottya Ilosvai, Tony Manna, Ameya Narkar, Elizabeth Stahlmann, Phillip Taratula, and Kimberly Vilbrun-François

Yale Repertory Theatre (James Bundy, Artistic Director; Florie Seery, Managing Director) presents Rhinoceros, Eugene Ionesco’s tragicomic vision of the horrors of groupthink, March 6-28 at Yale Repertory Theatre (1120 Chapel Street). Liz Diamond, Chair of Directing at David Geffen School of Drama and Resident Director at Yale Repertory Theatre, stages Frank Galati’s full-throttle one-act adaptation of Derek Prouse’s translation, with choreography by Emily Coates.

On an ordinary Sunday in a small French town, Berenger and his friend Gene enjoy a drink on a café terrace. Suddenly a rhinoceros charges across the square, crushing everything in its path. A drunken dream… or…? As neighbors and friends begin sprouting hides and horns, the shy, shambolic Berenger must make a choice: stand against–or join–the rampaging herd. Rhinoceros is Ionesco’s tragicomic cri de coeur, imploring each of us to resist the call to fall in line.

In Diamond’s production, performers comprising the microcosm of the town reshape the scenery around Berenger as he stumbles through an increasingly disorienting world. Ionesco’s comic surrealism grows darker as the play moves propulsively in Galati’s shortened version toward its stark conclusion. The play is performed without intermission.

An ensemble cast amplifies Ionesco’s comic and cautionary tale of the seductions of power and our willingness to surrender to it. As Liz Diamond says, “The play invites actors to play the stakes to the hilt, to inhabit the extremity of the situation—that’s what makes it both funny, and, in our time especially, frightening. Ionesco satirizes us for the way we scuttle crabwise to side with those who hold the power, offering lame excuses for our capitulation. But he also offers Berenger, who, apathetic at first, ultimately chooses to stand up for human autonomy, for freedom. Berenger, while unlikely single handedly to turn the tide of history, finds meaning in the attempt.”

Tony Award nominee Reg Rogers (Yale Rep: An Enemy of the People; Broadway: Merrily We Roll Along, Tootsie, The Iceman Cometh) leads the cast as Berenger. The company also features Will Dagger (Broadway: Good Night, and Good Luck; Off-Broadway: Give Me Carmelita Tropicana, Corsicana) as Dudard, Jeremy A. Fuentes (David Geffen School of Drama: Les Liaisons Dangereuses) as Waiter, Nicole Michelle Haskins (Regional: The Color Purple; Hopelessly Devoted; Caroline, or Change) as Mrs. Boeuf, Richard Ruiz Henry (Yale Rep: Assassins; Off-Broadway: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Drift, Streets of New York) as Botard, Dorottya Ilosvai (David Geffen School of Drama: Utopia, Three Sisters) as Townsperson, Tony Manna (Yale Rep: Cymbeline, These Paper Bullets!; Off-Broadway: Timon of Athens) as Papillon/Cafe Owner, Ameya Narkar (David Geffen School of Drama: Utopia, Three Sisters) as Townsperson, Elizabeth Stahlmann (Yale Rep: The Inspector; Broadway/Center Theater Group: Slave Play; Off-Broadway: Here There Are Blueberries) as Daisy, Phillip Taratula (Broadway: The Skin of Our Teeth; Off-Broadway: Ginger Twinsies, The Beastiary) as Gene, and Kimberly Vilbrun-François (David Geffen School of Drama: You Can Tell a Tree by its Fruit) as Colette. Understudies include Tessa Albertson (u/s Daisy, Townsperson), Walker Borba (u/s Berenger), Gabriel Cali (u/s Gene) Ashly Chalico (u/sMrs. Boeuf, Colette), Rasan Kuvly (u/s Dudard), John Maria Gutierrez (u/s Botard, Papillon/Cafe Owner), and Sboniso Thombeni (u/s Dudard, Waiter, Townsperson).

The creative team includes director Diamond, choreographer Coates, Jennifer Yuqing Cao 曹语晴 (Scenic Designer), Tricie Bergmann (Costume Designer), Donald Holder (Lighting Designer), Xi (Zoey) Lin 林曦 (Sound Designer), Ke Xu 许可 (Projection Designer), The Wig Associates (Hair, Wig, and Makeup Designers), Daria Kerschenbaum and Mia Van Deloo (Production Dramaturgs), Lilliana Gonzalez (Technical Director), Michael Rossmy (Fight and Intimacy Director), Grace Zandarski (Vocal and Dialect Coach), Jeremy A. Fuentes (Dance Captain), Calleri Jensen Davis (Casting Director), and Caileigh Potter (Stage Manager).

An ardent anti-fascist, Ionesco lived in Romania during the rise of the Iron Guard and its joining of the Axis Powers. He saw his peers entranced by and converted to an extreme and brutal ideology. When he moved back to France—to Marseille, in summer 1942—the collaborationist regime in southern France would soon be under full Nazi occupation. After the war, he observed the cream of the French intelligentsia embrace Stalin’s Communism. Rhinoceros was Ionesco’s response to what he’d witnessed: a world giving up individual reason to feverish bandwagoning and collapsing into barbarism.

Rhinoceros is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc.

Rhinoceros Performance Schedule & Ticketing

Tickets for Rhinoceros are currently available: $15 and $35 for all previews, $15 and $50 on weeknights after opening, and $15 and $65 on weekends and matinees after opening. Student tickets are $15 for all performances.

Performances take place:

Friday, March 6 at 8pm (Preview)
Saturday, March 7 at 8pm (Preview, Post-Show Discussion)
Monday, March 9 at 8pm (Preview, Post-Show Discussion)
Tuesday, March 10 at 8pm (Preview)
Wednesday, March 11 at 8pm (Preview)
Thursday, March 12 at 8pm (Opening Night)
Friday, March 13 at 8pm
Saturday, March 14 at 2pm
Saturday, March 14 at 8pm
Tuesday, March 17 at 8pm
Wednesday, March 18 at 2pm (Pre-Performance Discussion) (Wednesday Matinee)
Wednesday, March 18 at 8pm
Thursday, March 19 at 8pm
Friday, March 20 at 8pm
Saturday, March 21 at 2pm (Audio Description) (Touch Tour) (Talk Back)
Saturday, March 21 at 8pm (ASL)
Tuesday, March 24 at 8pm
Wednesday, March 25 at 8pm
Thursday, March 26 at 8pm
Friday, March 27 at 8pm (Open Caption in Spanish)
Saturday, March 28 at 2pm (Open Caption in English)
Saturday, March 28 at 8pm

About Eugene Ionesco (Playwright)

Eugene Ionesco was born November 26, 1909, in Slatina, Romania, and died March 28, 1994, in Paris, France. He studied in Bucharest and Paris, where he lived from 1945. His first one-act antiplay, The Bald Soprano (1950), inspired a revolution in dramatic techniques and helped inaugurate the Theatre of the Absurd. He followed it with other one-act plays in which illogical events create an atmosphere both comic and grotesque, including The Lesson (1951), The Chairs (1952), and The New Tenant (1955). His most popular full-length play, Rhinoceros (1959), concerns a provincial French town in which all the citizens are metamorphosing into rhinoceroses. Other plays include Exit the King (1962) and A Stroll in the Air (1963). He was elected to the Académie Française in 1970.