Word: ionesco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...pride of trace in your mind?"), and caters to the acidity of Gore Vidal ("Have you read any bad books lately?"). Mark Van Doren's answers "seemed to demand the topography of poetry," and so Shenker has reproduced them in verse form. Only once, in an interview with Eugene Ionesco, does he seem to be at a loss for words, and the conversation begins to take on the character of an absurdist play...
...Ionesco described the play as an anti-Nazi drama. But, more broadly, it exposes the collective hysteria that lies beneath the thin veneer of reason covering modern society. The play is still more complex than a simple attack on mindless conformity. It questions what resistance to conformity really means. Because he resists rhinoceritis, Stanley appears to be a hero at the end. But there is an ambiguous quality to his heroism. When he realizes he is the only human left in the town, his resistance to the disease momentarily weakens. He begins to think it might be nice...
...American Film Theatre's first three filmed plays were straightforward transcriptions of the original play scripts. But Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros received a different treatment. The script was tampered with. New scenes were added, old dialogue was cut. Names and settings were Americanized, and pop music was introduced. The flavor of Ionesco's work was lost. Director Tom O'Horgan transformed Ionesco's forceful drama of the Absurd into a banal comedy...
...Ionesco's play, originally set in a small French village, has been transported in the film version to "Anywhere, U.S.A." O'Horgan and Julian Barry, writer of the screenplay, seem to assume that's the only way we can relate to the plot. Americanization of the French names, and a pop music score by Galt MacDermot (Hair) are further attempts at relevancy. If the play really has meaning, it should be able to transcend time and locale...
...Ionesco does have something to tell us in his play. The power of his message derives from a universality which O'Horgan's Americanization can only demean. The play is about conformity. At the end of the story only Stanley (Gene Wilder) remains a human being. Everyone else in the town has been inflicted with rhinoceritis, a mysterious disease which changes them into snorting, thick-skinned rhinos. Originally the beasts are an anomaly in the town. But they become more and more appealing to the people. The human beings yearn to become rhinoceroses. The comfort of conformity becomes more attractive...