Review: Rhino Conservation Erotic Novel, Lower Marsh Arts Club

From the moment performers Daniel Trengove and Gabriel Madden appear on stage in dazzling sequinned shirts with wide-eyed enthusiasm and stilted movements, their unique brand of humour is apparent. Rhino Conservation Erotic Novel essentially takes the form of a presentation, with the sincerity of its charitable endeavour to save a dying species thinly veiling the absolute joke shop underneath.

The pair have come up with some inventive erm… business ideas, crafted works of literature, and even “appeared on Oprah” in order to complete their mission. The show hurtles from one idea to the next with the logic of a rapid-fire cartoon. Much of the comedy sits on the border between sincerity and irony. Trengove earnestly explains the mission of their rhino conservation charity while Madden chips in with ad-libs, creating a dynamic that reminded me of the pop duo that never was, Ant and Seb, singing ‘Mysterious Girl’ on The X Factor. There’s a distinct sense of ‘that sounded really cool in my head’.

That gap between how something looks from the outside and how it evidently feels in the moment becomes an excellent source of comic tension. Madden, for instance, feigns ignorance after being “cancelled pretty hard” following his appearance on Oprah, where he uses an affected accent. Under the sometimes extreme and grotesque scenarios is a relatable cycle of doing embarrassing things and pretending they’re not really happening. 

They repeatedly return to this half-sincere, half-embarrassed mode. Madden solemnly reads his erotic work of fiction, May Contain Traces of Nuts, with Trengove on the Irish whistle, before the screen adaptation May Contain Traces of Rhino Nuts is staged with an audience member. Their hapless volunteer is strapped into a rhino costume and cast as ‘Gabriel the Rhino’, a flirtatious male with all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, including some questionable content that our volunteer has allegedly improvised. Trengove responds with studied minimalism as ‘Estelle the Rhino’ (named after his mother). 

The pair also mine their own friendship for every possible awkward implication. Their noticeably tactile relationship is treated with such straight-faced seriousness that even the most innocuous interaction can feel precariously close to becoming something else. During a series of dance numbers, they seem liable to fall into the audience, or each other, at any moment. They are masters of the brink.

They’re also remarkably good at working with the room. Audience participation never feels like too much of a gamble: they construct jokes around their volunteers while retaining a clear sense that the interaction will go somewhere. Trengove’s ‘Make It Hotter’ app, for instance, asks volunteers to be photographed. Appearing on camera could seem a step too far for an unsuspecting viewer, were it not for the confidence that an uproarious punchline awaits them.

Rhino Conservation Erotic Novel feels genuinely fresh. Its jokes are sharp, specific and completely its own. More than that, Trengove and Madden have built a properly functioning comic engine: the tensions between the performers, the audience, and the realities of the outside world are so well established that each new idea feels like an exciting addition to an already-running joke, rather than a new premise the audience has to be persuaded to buy into. They have created a unique winning formula. 

Created by Daniel Trengove and Gabriel Madden

Rhino Converservation Erotic Novel has completed its run at the Lower Marsh Arts Club.