Feliks's Reviews > The Ubu Plays: Ubu Rex / Ubu Cuckolded / Ubu Enchained

I think it's a 'must-read' for anyone aware of the significance of the time-period it was written in, and the intellectual/artistic movement it was a part of. To fathom that era better, well ...this is a keystone work. Think of it this way: any stage play which provokes a riot in the audience, one should read at least once. The first and longest of the trio is more than a bit juvenile but as you go along, the back-cover blurb really does ring true. Ubu is a metaphor for modern man, the man we've all grown to despise as the Twentieth-Century dawned. Petty, petulant, tantrum-prone, rapacious, puny, vulgar; 'King' Ubu is a monster made monstrous and desolate by modernism. 'Ubu' may be the first foul-mouthed, spoiled little frat-boy in literature, but the conditions which gave cause to him on paper are accurately predicted by the midget Jarry, (who was perhaps the ultimate loner save anyone else except Toulouse-Latrec). We observe those same conditions in western society today, outside the theater. Ubu-ism surrounds us. The chap sitting next to you on the bus or train, is likely an Ubu. More likely than not. So it's all still mighty relevant. In terms of technical presentation, the three plays are somewhat like a series of thin skits from SNL (Saturday Night Live) with that same kind of wearying dollness; except supercharged by the fully explicit ...expletives. Finally: Jarry deploys on flourish I've not seen in any other stage-play: and it's more fun than all the scatological frothing. Some scenes (he specifies overtly to the director) can be 'swapped for other scenes'; he wrote them so as to be interchangeable. Now that was clever.