Word: wildered
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Theophilus North, Wilder...
...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...
...Wilder is a properly meek and appropriately gentle Stanley. Like Mostel, he makes the most of his watered-down part. His big scene, the final assertion of his humanity, is blighted by the same gimmickry that plagues Mostel's transformation scene. Having acknowledged that he can never become a rhinoceros, Wilder climbs to the top of a tall building and looks out over the town of animals. O'Horgan's camera frames him against a blue sky, he lights a cigarette, music surges up in the background. What is meant to be a moving assertion of man's dignity ends...
Rhinoceros, intact, is a scathing fairy tale, a parable about how everyone in a large town turns into a rampaging herd of large, loud, one-horned beasts. The lone holdout is a slightly sodden dreamer called Stanley (Gene Wilder), who regrets his inability to metamorphose, but who finally comes to realize the tenuous value of individuality. Stanley is a reluctant combatant and the winner of a dubious victory. His final assertion ("I'm the last man left, and I'm staying that way until the end") is as much an assertion of uncertainty as defiance, a bolster...
...Theophilus North, Wilder...