Ubu the King

Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) was a French symbolist writer and playwright. He wrote the first version of his most famous play Ubu the King, titled The Poles (Les Polonais), as a farce along with his classmate Henri Morin while still a teenager; the young authors based the character of Ubu on one of their teachers. Later on, Jarry revised the text. Ubu the King, with its brutal humour, absurd characters and situations, and specific language is considered a forerunner of the Surrealist, Dada, Futurist, and absurdist movements—that is, the avant-garde movements that only developed several decades later—caused a scandal among the audience at its world premiere on 10th December 1896, so it was never staged again during Jarry’s lifetime. Nevertheless, Jarry wrote three more sequels to Ubu the King: Ubu Cuckolded, Ubu in Chains, and Ubu on the Hill—a tetralogy that traces Ubu’s journey from a king who ruthlessly strives for power and authority, stopping at nothing to achieve it, all the way to a slave. The text is shockingly relevant today.

Mama Ubu, a satirical version of Lady Macbeth, is unhappy with her social position and persuades her husband, the fat, greedy, vulgar Papa Ubu, Captain of Dragoons, to kill the Polish King Wenceslas and seize the throne for himself. Papa Ubu, whose main priorities are eating and cursing, is at first somewhat hesitant, but then, with the help of the corrupt Captain Bordure, kills the king and his two sons, while the youngest, Bougrelas, escapes. Once he seizes the throne and gets a taste of power, Papa Ubu is unstoppable—as a ruler, he is cruel, violent, greedy, reckless, and paranoid; he imposes exorbitant taxes, lies, slaughters everyone in sight, steals, and soon throws even Bordure, his former ally, into prison. Captain Bordure flees to Russia to Tsar Alexei, and the Russian army attacks Poland. In the battle, Ubu’s army is defeated, but despite their many disagreements, Papa Ubu and Mama Ubu flee to France by ship. In the sequel, Papa Ubu struggles with his Conscience, who travels with him, locked in a suitcase…

The production, based on the excellent translation by Primož Vitez, featuring not only the first part but also the motifs and excerpts from other works of the Ubu tetralogy, will be directed by Aleksandar Popovski (1969), a master of absurdist comedy who most recently directed the hit productions The Addams Family and Heroines on the Main Stage of the Ljubljana City Theatre, and prior to that, G. Büchner’s Danton’s Death (2018), N. Gazvoda’s theatrical series Crow's Gate (2017), Dunsinane by D. Greig (2016), The Good Person of Szechwan by B. Brecht (2015), and the dramatic trilogy From the Lives of Bourgeois Heroes by C. Sternheim (2013). Aleksandar Popovski mainly directs in Belgrade, Zagreb, Budapest, and Istanbul, as well as elsewhere in Europe.