Ubu Roi (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)

This is play which, upon its first performance, caused much outcry, riotous behavior, and walk-outs. Not surprisingly, it ended up closing after that initial night. But the playwright was respected enough, and amused his peers enough, so the infamous play was kept around and referenced from time to time. It is simply dumb luck this occurred. Ubu Roi simply came out at the right time and right place. Had it been produced by any other person at any other time, it would be forgotten, rather than a faded footnote.The absurdist content and scatological references, which caused all the trouble, are extremely tame by today’s standards. I’m sure there are plenty of people who upon reading this play wonder what the fuss was about. Remember however that this play came out in 1896, long before the surrealists, dadists, theater of the absurd, or even theater of the cruel, were conceived. And in a very real sense Ubu Roi with its ridiculously evil characters, yet effectively parodying the world, anticipates all of these movements.This version translates the title as King Turd. However, the word "Ubu" is really simply a babble word evolved from the French pronunciation of the name "Hebert”. The language of the play is a unique mix of slang code-words, puns and near-gutter vocabulary, set to strange speech patternsAs the play begins, Ubu's wife convinces him to lead a revolution, and kills the King of Poland and most of the royal family. The King's son, Bougrelas, and the Queen escape, but the latter later dies. Ubu, now King, begins heavily taxing the people and killing the nobles for their wealth. Ubu's henchman gets thrown into prison; who then escapes to Russia, where he has the Tsar declare war on Ubu.As Ubu heads out to confront the invading Russians, his wife tries to steal the money and treasures in the palace. She is driven out by a popular revolt of Poles. She runs away to her husband, Ubu, who has, in the meantime, been defeated by the Russians, been abandoned by his followers, and been attacked by a bear. Ubu's wife pretends to be the angel Gabriel, in order to try to scare Ubu into forgiving her for her attempt to steal from him. They fight, and she is rescued by the entrance of Bougrelas, who is after Ubu. He knocks down the attackers with the body of the dead bear, after which he and his wife flee to France.

Satirical, funny, scatological play that is without a doubt great fun! See the play if you can, otherwise sit back and imagine it.

The translation is bad. I wish I could speak french so I could more justly support this claim. I've watched plays and browsed through other translations and this one is just poor. The play is great though, and dover keeps their prices low, so I can't complain too much. The drawings are pleasant.

Loved this play! So funny and bizarre. Breaks barriers for its time and creates a lot of good discussion for class. Fast moving and easy to get through.

one more evidence that literature is able to predict the future but is uncapable of preventing it... Trump is Ubu.

Another happy child.

Thank you

Not the greatest translation of Jarry's masterpiece.As a Dover thrift edition, it is thrifty and cheap. . . you get what you pay for.I would recommend the Cyril Connelly/Simon Watson Taylor version in it's place.

Jarry is a new author to me. Superbly absurd and scarily familiar to one of my own creations. I was until recently unaware of 'Pataphysics' and it was uplifting to discover it for the first time. When I wrote 'Maud' and it's sequel, I thought I was unique in inventing the science of 'Passive Observation', little did I know I had been well and truly trounced many years before. Love this and his other works, a true genius.

A truly whacky tale that makes you doubt it was written in the 19th century - if you like the avant garde, you'll love this!

As with most plays, I think Ubu Roi suffers quite a lot from being read as a script rather than watched. This is particularly noticeable in this instance, as any production of Jarry's work would likely derive much of its humour from the means in which they attempt to recreate some of the play's more ambitious scenes; and this, of course, is in addition to the loss of any other visual humour, the chemistry between well-rehearsed actors, and any sense of how lines were intended to be spoken. There are also some relatively lengthy segments in which characters simply describe through dialogue events which are meant to be taking place on stage: one imagines that a performance of the play would manage a dramatic improvement on the raw script by showing these instead of just spelling them out.Otherwise, Ubu Roi is pretty good, if a little short. A couple of the lines manage to be very funny (A CLOWN makes a star turn in Act II), even in the emaciated script format, and where jokes don't quite hit it's easy to see how they'd be improved with the visual and physical additions the script obviously lacks. The only really poor scene is the long procession of unfortunates Ubu throws into the de-braining machine: this is meant to be an ad-libbed segment, but both examples of how it has been interpreted drag out the joke for far too long and never really manage to be funny. The plot (a pretty thin cod-Shakespeare tragedy) adequately serves its purpose of supporting the series of comic burlesques which are the main draw of Ubu Roi. Similarly, in keeping with the anti-play ethos, the characters run through various shades of one- and two-dimensionality, and don't show any development outside of dying. But it's pretty clear this was never meant to be an intellectually complex work.I don't know any French, so I can't speak for the quality or purity of the translation, but the odd couple of lines do come off a bit awkwardly, and there are a fair number of typos. I'm also not sure I agree with the rendering of Ubu's name as 'Turd', but this doesn't have much impact on the enjoyment of the script itself.I've knocked off a star for the slightly stilted effect that reading a play script gives, but, held to its own standards, Ubu Roi is good at what it intends to do, and Ubu himself has gained new relevance as a caricature in recent months. Ultimately, though, you've got to see it live. It'd be much better live.

Nice, affordable copy of an absurdist classic.