Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, and Tatiana Maslany to star in Ionesco’s RHINOCEROS at the A.R.T., dir. Diane Paulus.

[ErmengardeStopSniveling]

Posted: 4/22/26 at 6:19pm

This surely has Broadway aspirations!

John Turturro, Paul Giamatti, and Tatiana Maslany will star in “Rhinoceros” Aug. 12-Sept. 20 at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, directed by A.R.T. artistic director Diane Paulus. The translation is by Derek Prouse, and it was also used in the recent Yale Rep production.

The project was Turturro's idea.

 

From the Boston Globe:

In “Rhinoceros,” the residents of a community in France inexplicably and inexorably begin to turn into rhinoceroses, one after another. By the end of the play, the only one who has held onto his humanity is a once-indolent alcoholic named Bérenger, who has grown into a fierce defender of human identity. Turturro will play Bérenger in the ART production. 

Giamatti will portray Jean, an urbane and seemingly disciplined intellectual who transforms into a violent green rhinoceros. The character is often seen as a scathing appraisal of the French intelligentsia’s herd mentality by Ionesco, a Romanian-French dramatist.

Maslany, meanwhile, will play Daisy, a gentle-spirited typist and Bérenger’s girlfriend, who eventually abandons him and joins the rhinoceroses, drawn to what she sees as their godlike power.

The ART’s “Rhinoceros” will be a new adaptation created by the company, based on a translation by Derek Prouse. During the interview with the Globe, Paulus said the goal was to fashion “a version of the text that has no distancing from the audience.” A production of “Rhinoceros” using the Prouse translation was presented last month at Yale Repertory Theatre.

Paulus has often emphasized political and social engagement during her nearly two decades leading the ART. While the “Rhinoceros” project originated with Turturro, the production is certain to be seen by some as a commentary on President Trump, whose authoritarian leanings have grown in his second term in office, and whose administration is locked in a legal battle with Harvard, where ART is based.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/22/arts/rhinoceros-art-john-turturro-paul-giamatti-tatiana-maslany/