STAGE REVIEW : Players Reach for Insanity in ‘Rhinos’

A sturdy staging by the La Canada Players of Eugene Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros” breathes life into Theater of the Absurd at the Basement Theatre in Pasadena.

The 20 or so oversized, papier-mache rhino heads slinking and poking around the aisles and stage go a long way toward embodying Ionesco’s notion of life’s enduring futility.

A faithful revival of “Rhinoceros” (1960) should make mass psychosis appear almost exhilarating at the same time it sends shivers up your neck.

The La Canada Players do not quite catch that insane appeal of the play, but this Actors Equity production is, nonetheless, spirited and well-acted.

Watching all those townspeople transformed into a herd of rhinos, grunting and snorting in those lifelike rhinoceros heads, you sense the play’s anti-conformist message: Apply enough mass pressure and we can all turn into a herd of rhinos.

The play, unfortunately, is overlong, the dialogue relentless and repetitive, and there is not much any director can do about that--except to cut the text, which might not be a bad idea if it didn’t sound so blasphemous. (On the other hand, directors cut Shakespeare’s plays all the time.)

As for the production’s high-decibel dialogue, it is necessary to underscore another of Ionesco’s themes: the impotence of language.

Energetically blending the verbal and physical demands, Director Brett Grindle and his strong cast of 18 viscerally compel a suspension of disbelief. Eerily at first, then chillingly and, finally, with feverish hysteria, they create the illusion of a whole town becoming pachyderms, aided in no little fashion by thundering sound effects that seem to shake the whole theater.

The first actor who materializes into a beast before our eyes (Larry Davison) assumes a greenish color and, huffing and puffing, sets the tone for the rest of the show.

“We must get back to nature!” he shouts as Jean, the role that blazed Zero Mostel to triumph in the 1961 Broadway production.

The upright, weaving animal pantomime is never farcical, and the rhino masks, expertly designed by Dave Faul and Bruce Buonauro, increase the uneasy tension.

A nice inventive touch, not in the Ionesco text, occurs when the protagonist switches on a TV in his shabby apartment and the video image is that of a bunch of rhinos.

The ending--in which Ionesco’s ordinary clerk and alter ego, Berenger, keeps his skin and declares, “I’m not giving up!”--remains as obscure as ever. The most common view is that he is voicing his power and his humanity. But one critic long ago perhaps put it best: “He was condemned to stay human.”

David Titzler gives Berenger an amiable, Everyman commonality. As his love interest, Daisy, Lorie Hope negotiates her fall into rhinodom with subtle desire.

Several actors vividly perform as frantic townspeople. Among them: Tony Becket Roque, Chuck Lacey, David Farjean, Sean Morrisey and, in a hilarious turn, Cici Lau, who crumbles into a heaving wreck, literally hurling herself down a flight of stairs.

“Rhinoceros,” Basement Theatre, 464 E. Walnut St., Pasadena, Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 14. $8 to $10; (818) 397-1651. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.