Friends Bérenger and Jean are chatting on a café terrace one Sunday afternoon when suddenly a rhinoceros charges across the square. While everyone present discusses the incident in astonishment and horror, only Bérenger remains unmoved. The next day at the office, the event is hotly debated – until Madame Boeuf bursts in, delivers her husband's sick note, and breathlessly reports that a rhinoceros followed her. Soon after, it rushes up the stairs and is identified by Madame Boeuf as her husband. Gradually, more and more inhabitants of the provincial town transform into angry pachyderms. And suddenly, they are in the majority. Anyone who wants to belong also transforms – "one has to move with the times, after all."

Rhinoceroses

Detmolder Sommertheater

Fürstliche Reitbahn

Tourist, Congress and Saalbau GmbH

Cleverly, Tom Lanoye transposes Shakespeare's tale of the king and his (un)faithful daughters to the present day, wittily swapping the genders. The king mutates into an influential ruler of a business empire, and the daughters into sons: Industrial magnate Elizabeth Lear wants to abdicate and pass her inheritance on to the younger generation. But first, she wants to hear from her offspring how much they love her. Two of the sons flatter her with carefully chosen words to secure as large a share of their mother's inheritance as possible. But Cornald, the youngest of the brothers, refuses the deceitful deal: money for love. Corrupted by the power of being a company head, Elizabeth Lear cannot distinguish between genuine and feigned affection and, in a fit of rage, disinherits her former favorite son In doing so, she sets in motion a mechanism of downfall…

Gernot Schmidt

Events

Upcoming events

May 15 - Jul 1, 2026

Queen Lear · Landestheater Detmold

Past events

Mar 20 - May 1, 2026

Rhinoceroses · Landestheater Detmold

About

Gernot Schmidt hasn't added a bio