The cast of “Rhinoceros” performs in Strebel Auditorium. Photo courtesy of Laura Salvaggio.

On Thursday, April 10, I saw the opening night performance of Utica University’s Theatre Department’s show Rhinoceros. Going into this play, I had little to no clue about what I was about to see, but after seeing it I can confidently say that this was an entertaining and well-thought out production. 

The play, written by Eugene Ionesco and directed by Rachel Wolfe, associate professor of theatre, was based around a fascist society where people turned into rhinoceroses when they converted their thinking to match the fascist party. With today’s political climate, this play made a statement which I believe is important for people to understand. Originally, I knew that this play was related to American politics, but I did not know that it would be so obvious. For example, the people who wore rhinoceros masks also had red hats on. 

Along with that there were slides of fascist dictatorships being shown, which corresponded to the costumes/uniforms that the rhinoceros were wearing. The symbolism in this play really stood out to me and made it 10x better in my opinion. With all of the DEI rollbacks happening in colleges right now, this play was a push back on the current presidential administration. 

I also loved the shift in audience feeling from the first half of the play to the second half. In the first half the audience was engaged with the stage and trying to figure out what was going on, but in the second half the rhinoceroses were grunting and crawling through the theatre aisles and jumpscaring the audience. This was very unexpected, but it added an element of surprise to the play, which kept the audience on edge. I think this addition added to the overall performance because it had me looking over my shoulder, anticipating a scare, which kept me wide awake and engaged. 

The student actors in this play did really well. It felt as though each cast member fully immersed themselves in their role and gave it their all. The casting of student-athletes was cool to see because it showed that Utica University students are diverse in their interests and can do it all. It was refreshing to see people playing roles with enthusiasm, and some playing roles that break gender roles.

One of my favorite characters was Botard, played by Jerome Nembhard, because he had a lot of comical moments and symbolism within the role. However, all of the cast members did an amazing job with their individual roles and landed great laughs all around.

Overall, I really enjoyed Utica University’s rendition of Rhinoceros. The timing of this piece with its relation to the current climate of America was interesting and impactful to the audience. Not only was it impactful, but it also had many funny moments which made the entire show a little lighter.