Hartwig Theatre, Theatre and Dance Building
Ubu the King
By Alfred Jarry Part political satire, part comic nightmare and entirely unhinged, Ubu the King is the kind of play that makes you laugh, wince and wonder what on earth you just witnessed. Alfred Jarry’s 1896 masterpiece follows the gloriously ridiculous Père Ubu as he schemes his way to the throne—and then proceeds to exercise power with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Long before Monty Python, The Simpsons or The Book of Mormon, Jarry was gleefully breaking the rules of polite theater. Ubu the King is rude, absurd, anarchic and surprisingly relevant, skewering greed, vanity, political power and the human tendency to hand ridiculous people far too much authority.
Come for the outrageous comedy. Stay for the theatrical chaos, the visual invention, and the sheer audacity of a play that helped change what theater could be.
You may not have seen anything quite like Ubu the King—and that is precisely the point. If you like your theater smart, strange, irreverent and impossible to forget, this is one you’ll want to see.
