Rhino – online gaming meets theatre in this dazzling adaptation of Ionesco’s classic (Tinderbox at Lyric Theatre until Saturday 28 October) #biaf23

It’s as if this was the definitive staging Eugène Ionesco had intended when he wrote Rhinoceros in 1959. Notionally it’s a story about rhinoceroses arriving in a small village and the conformity, paranoia and false logic that follows as people become entangled in all that the rhinoceroses begin to stand for. Everyman Bérenger must decide whether to join the masses or whether to resist the metamorphosis. It’s generally accepted that Ionesco was reflecting on how Fascism and Nazism rose in the build-up to the Second World War.

Tinderbox’s production of Rhino maps the characters into avatars in a multiplayer video game. Each demonstrates a very individual – and comedic – range of movements that are maintained all the way through to the final curtain call and walking off stage. Being virtual characters in an online game, they can’t touch. But that doesn’t stop them interacting with fighting moves straight out of the Way of the Exploding Fist that 8-bit ZX Spectrum and arcade game kids will remember.

While the physical movement is trademark Patrick J O’Reilly, the director also delivers an all-embracing concept to the production that absorbs the audience. You can nearly forget that you’re in a theatre, perhaps transported to watching a Twitch stream of these six players.

Set designer Tracey Lindsay provides portable walls on castors that double up as windows and smart phone screens as we navigate between the three levels/locations. Some of the spoken dialogue also appears in the form of a chain of instant messages. The younger and more hip audience members laugh in time with the writing on the screen, while the less smartphone addicted guffaw in sync with the spoken words.

Garth McConaghie’s score is akin to the sophisticated rolling music that underpins a modern video game with themes emerging for particular characters, and lots of game reward and bonus sound effects keeping the audience plugged into the gaming metaphor. LED light ropes define the character charging/resting zones while Mary Tumelty’s simple moving heads add dramatic red and green tunnels of light at key moments in the gameplay. The distinctly patterned black and white costumes by Rosie McClelland are like those you’d select when customising your character in a game, albeit it with a commedia dell'arte twist. All the while Eoin Robinson animates the screens and backdrop with computer graphics that are integral to the storytelling and never flashy distractions.

O’Reilly has helpfully taken a red pen to the original script and shortened it down to create a 90-minute no interval performance. Richard Clements encapsulates the vulnerability of the central character Bérenger, surrounded by enticing performances from Daniel Cunningham, Mary McGurk, Nicky Harley, Shaun Blaney and Vicky Allen who manage to interact with projected versions of themselves as well as each other without ever breaking character.

The racism present in the original script – one whole section riffs off Asian vs African rhinoceroses – results in characters receiving warnings and one being suspended for a period. Yet that doesn’t stop more and more people throwing their lot in with the new tribe of animals who have appeared and disrupted life in the town.

When you’re barely facing up to your own reality and other people are squeezing in with their spin on what’s going on. When dealing with your own internal trauma is exacerbated by waves of societal disturbance. How can you keep your head above water and not plunge under and allow yourself to be carried along?

Rhino could have been written and staged to comment on the online discourse around Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and Israel, or any number of other conflicts. And it taps into the spiral of conspiracy nonsense that can take over people’s thinking and their whole lives. And there’s an intelligent acknowledgement that people’s own unseen or unacknowledged demons can contribute to how they traverse the unexpected situations society throws at them.

Grab a ticket to see Rhino at the Lyric Theatre while you can. This run ends on Saturday 28 October. It’s a modern twist that reimagines and enhances a play that still has something to say. Its quality is testament to the power of a really talented ensemble on stage working together with creatives who can translate their imagination into reality (albeit, in this case, virtual reality) to create a dazzling performance. Hopefully Rhino will have a life beyond Belfast International Arts Festival and will return, perhaps even stampede, towards a well-deserved reboot by Tinderbox in Dublin, London, Edinburgh or beyond.

Belfast International Arts Festival continues until 5 November.

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