One particular Sunday, their lunch is interrupted when a stampeding rhinoceros charges down the street outside the restaurant. His friend John (Zero Mostel) disapproves, but still meets Stanley every Sunday lunchtime to talk to him about the error of his ways. Depressed, bored accountant Stanley (Gene Wilder) spends his week-days crunching numbers and his weekends drinking himself into a haze. This presentation of Rhinoceros is mainly a story about conformity and, in particular, those rare few who refuse to conform. It is not, however, as multi-layered as the original play (which was set in France and had strong political and historical connotations about the Nazi occupation). This film version is set in urban America and is a deliberately subversive, surreal experience with strong comic performances. Eugene Ionesco's 'Rhinoceros' is one of the most famous of all the absurd plays. Also, the main character in an absurdist play is usually significantly out of key with everyone and everything around him.

A particular rule of absurdist plays is that they have no dramatic conflict, instead dealing with logically impossible situations and having the characters speak about irrational things as if they are perfectly rational.

When first devised, the Theatre-Of-The-Absurd movement was rather unpopular because audiences were left bewildered by the intentionally illogical and plot less story lines. The Theatre-Of-The-Absurd was a style of experimental play-scripting that was practised in the '50s and '60s by playwrights like Samuel Beckett, Arthur Adamov, Jean Genet and Eugene Ionesco.

Rhinoceros 5 dmdf