Sunday Independent

An Ubu Roi that would please Jarry

Sunday July 23 2006
GALWAY ARTS
FESTIVAL
THEATRE
EMER O'KELLY

ALFRED Jarry's Ubu Roi was first performed in 1896. Not what audiences were expecting from a French modernist version of Macbeth written by a 23-year-old rising star.

Since then Jarry's seminally absurdist play has influenced an impressive number of playwrights. Now Vincent Woods has written an Irish version from a literal translation by Mary J Byrne, and he shows just how relevant and universal the piece was and is.

It tells the story of a violent layabout and his harpy of a wife who murder the royal family, take the throne, and reduce their country to scorched-earth poverty, using pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and anything else that seems handy. Until, of course, they get their comeuppance from the one prince who has escaped the holocaust.

But then nothing is simple; Prince Ballsless is just that, and he's manipulated by a pair of crafty civil servants who do the bidding of an outside power.

Woods uses many themes, with World War One tunes, CIA snappy suits, storm-troopers, a few Cossacks, and a red-suited Czar. Every period and style of tyranny is thrown into the mix in a manner that would have pleased Jarry. His original was making angry universal points, not attacking from a partisan viewpoint. Nobody came well out of his mix; and nobody comes well out of the mix Vincent Woods has put on stage.

Woods is a profoundly pessimistic writer, and his cold eye is suited to the great parabola of misanthropy and despair of King Ubu, staged with all the mordant humour and desperate irreverence forced on us by the overwhelming horror of events that began in the Second World War and continue to this day.

King Ubu is a co-production between Fineswine and the Arts Festival, and it's a worthy headliner for the festival. It's directed and designed by Monica Frawley with movement direction by David Bolger and music by Denis Clohessy, who performs it with Diane O'Keeffe.

The cast is led by Malcolm Adams and Michele Forbes as Pa and Ma Ubu, backed up more than ably by Mark O'Regan, Rory Nolan, Peter Daly, Janet Moran and Paul Reid.