‘Ubu Roi,’ a king most foul
Lights rise on a grotesque couple perched on matching commodes. Pa Ubu farts lustily; his long-suffering wife suggests killing the king to improve their station. Pa mulls it over, farts again, and tucks his used toilet paper into his undershirt.
Believe it or not, Ubu’s poor toilet training once made theatrical history. When “Ubu Roi,†Alfred Jarry’s scatological parody of “Macbeth,†premiered in Paris in 1896, it flipped a bird at all things “civilized†and psychologically consistent, heralding the Surrealist, Dada and Absurdist movements. Even William Butler Yeats, in the audience during the first performance, found himself more than a little freaked and apparently murmured the prophetic phrase, “After us, the Savage God.†Jarry’s merry prank became a rallying cry, then a precursor, and finally a rarely staged theatrical footnote.
So A Noise Within wins points for chutzpah -- they’re trying to keep subscribers by staging this? -- and there’s certainly plenty of energy and invention in the production. Composer and pianist David O’s sly tunes lend an overall rhythm to Jarry’s episodic storytelling, and Leon Wiebers’ supremely witty costumes suggest a goth “Babes in Toyland†with a dash of Lewis Carroll.
Pa Ubu (an appropriately disgusting Alan Blumenfeld) seizes the throne wearing a giant pair of button-up breeches, his hips and buttocks ballooned to greedy proportions, giving him the aura of a demonic Tweedledum.
But no matter how fast and furiously director Julia Rodriguez Elliott and her spirited company spin their talents, they can’t escape the limitations of the play, which makes its point by the first 20 minutes and then just keeps going, like an obnoxious electronic toy that threatens to derange all the adults in the room.
The earliest version of “Ubu Roi†was written when Jarry was still a teenager, intent on mocking one of his uptight lycee teachers; a hundred years later, the play still smells a little too much like teen spirit.
It has very little to say about power, other than connecting it to infantile anal pleasure, and Jarry’s use of language (in a translation by Cyril Connolly and Simon Watson Taylor) is neither deft nor nonsensical, except for the usurper’s deliciously absurd palindrome of a name.
Potty-mouthed Pa Ubu may ultimately deserve his minor avant-garde celebrity, but unless you’re an avid student of theater history, you may want to, as it were, pass.
*
‘Ubu Roi’
Where: A Noise Within, 234 S. Brand St., Glendale
When: 2 and 7 p.m. March 19, April 16, May 7; 8 p.m. March 23-24, April 15, 19-20, May 5; 2 and 8 p.m. May 6
Ends: May 7
Price: $32 and $36
Contact: (818) 240-0910, Ext. 1
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
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