After Sandy Nelson's blisteringly funny adaptation of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion last week, the Sol Summer season of cut-down classics at Oran Mor continues with Marcus Roche's take on Alfred Jarry's Absurdist comedy, Ubu Roi.
Jarry isn't to everybody's taste. His scatological, two-fingered salute to the establishment caused a riot when it first premiered in Paris in 1896. And if you're not a fan of Absurdist theatre it's unlikely this is the show for you. Even if you are, you might well come away from this production, which Roche also directs, wishing, if anything, that it was more profane, more raucous, more visceral, and more squirmingly grotesque and angry than it actually is. Jarry famously opened the play with the bastardised line "merdre!" Here, Roche opts for "clunt".
A surreal parody of Macbeth, and satire on political ambition, revolution and democracy, in it psychopathic tyrant Pa Ubu, (Barrie Hunter), aided and abetted by his equally greedy and power-thirsty wife Ma Ubu, (Helen McAlpine), mercilessly set in motion the cogs of Ubu's oppressive state regime after usurping the King of Poland.
Jarry's play is ripe for reinterpretation. With the UK in the grip of austerity, the eurozone in crisis, and the Arab Spring still in full flow in Syria, I longed for a bit of Con-Dem condemnation, Eurocrat banker bashing, or a nod to the Arab world uprisings on stage.
But Roche plays it straight here, (well, as straight as you can with Jarry). And while Hunter, McAlpine, and River City's Paul James Corrigan turn in decent performances, even in this pared-down state, the production becoming wearing.
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