UBU THE KING. To 10 December.
London
UBU THE KING
by Alfred Jarry new version by David Greig from a literal translation by Purni Morell
Barbican Theatre (The Pit) To 10 December 2005
Mon-Sat 7.45pm
BSL Signed 6 Dec
Post-show talk 6 Dec
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 November
Ever-inventive in word and deed.
It’s interesting to contrast the 2 Scottish productions recently opened in London. At Trafalgar Studios Mull Theatre’s Cyprus reflects polite Scottish theatregoing, spiced-over with contemporary political relevance. While Dundee Rep explodes into the Barbican’s smaller space with the voice of Scotland’s new, Euro-conscious theatricality (Glasgow’s Tron, another modern voice, is a co-producer).
Jarry’s 1896 play was a foecal egg splattered in audience faces, with its crazed scatology and chucking-out of expectations about character and plot consistency. David Greig’s firework-display translation revels in the lavatorial humour, allying it with the political grimness the 23-year old’s script seems to predict.
Greig enforces this relevance to the subsequent century’s political nightmares. In a phrase he doesn’t use, going down the pan could be its euphemism for death, Ubu using the toilet for bloody executions in the old folks’ home setting Greig and director Dominic Hill invent. This is a double-edged sword, giving Dad and Mum Ubu a grizzled viciousness, the antithesis of Shakespearean serenity, the curmudgeonly quality of old Steptoe or Alf Garnett carried to epic scale, with licence to kill.
Yet the return to normality when the young Carer who’s been caught up as rival king and victim in Ubu’s fantasies (a delicious moment as their fighting idles while both become fascinated with a TV programme) reduces the mayhem of murder to an old man toasting his feet on the Monopoly properties he’s set alight. They’re extinguished with a fire-blanket, more easily than the slaughter-dictatorships Ubu prefigures. Violence passes, yes, but not so easily.
Someone shouting rude words soon moves from being shocking to monotony. Hill’s theatrical verve avoids this by inventive staging solutions, a bed becoming a carriage of copulating senior citizens, or a parade of lawyers writing on toilet-paper. An image of judges crowded in the toilet trying to protect the law against Ubu’s corruption is simultaneously mocking and pathos-inducing.
Gerry Mulgrew, whose Communicado Theatre was a flamebearer of inventive physicality, is a gleefully determined Ubu, Ann Louise Ross a rightly restrained contrast as pale-faced companion-provocateur. After their exceptional Gypsy and this theatrical firework, Dundee Rep can claim to be a major company on the British theatre map.
Dad Ubu: Gerry Mulgrew
Mum Ubu: Ann Louise Ross
Carer: Emun Elliott
Chorus: Thane Bettany, Matthew Boyd, Kay Gallie, Ruth McGhie, Pamela Kelly, Bill Murdoch
Director: Dominic Hill
Designer: Tom Piper
Lighting: Bruno Poet
Composer: Paddy Cuneen
Movement: Janet Smith
Assistant director: Tim Licata
2005-12-01 10:48:12