Irish Times writers review King Ubu and Two Rooms.
King Ubu, Town Hall Theatre, Galway
An infantile, scatological, tyrannical creation who opened the door for Theatre of the Absurd, Brecht, Dada, Surrealism and Monty Python (among others), Ubu Roi has come a long way for somebody who began life in a schoolboy puppet show. Since the riotous impact of Alfred Jarry's 1896 production, Ubu has endured as a touchstone for anybody who would shatter the staid conventions of performance, and anyone who could create a startling, lurid spectacle to do it.
From its opening slur ("Murderenshite" - rioters take note), Vincent Woods' appropriately pungent new version of the play, King Ubu, uses coarse colloquialisms to make a very Irish Pa, matching Jarry obscenity for obscenity.
The production arrives, initially, at a brisk gallop, flashing through the anarchic and supple designs of director and designer Monica Frawley, alive to an aesthetic bloodline which flows from Toulouse-Lautrec to Picasso to Peter Brook. But while Woods and Frawley honour such Ubu traditions, neither can convince us that Ubu has anything new to offer.
The crude and simple tale of a royal henchman who overthrows the king, at his wife's insistence, then tyrannises his subjects before he is finally deposed, Ubu can be as superficial or as profound as you like.
It is an evergreen political allegory, a scabrous satire on the corruption of power, a Shakespearian parody, or all of the above. The one-off company Fineswine Productions (in a co-production with Galway Arts Festival) seem reluctant to limit themselves to any particular interpretation, fretful about updating Jarry, anxious not to meddle with his minimalism.
Instead, it is presented as a whirling piece of "total theatre", but sadly its execution seems incomplete.
When we first meet Ma and Pa Ubu - played with admirable grotesqueness by the excellent Michèle Forbes and a bestial Malcolm Adams - they are slumped on their sofa watching an inane gameshow. Once the vertiginous angles of Frawley's set are stunningly revealed, the seized throne becomes just a bigger sofa. But any efforts to satirise couch-potato consumption and celebrity culture are - like so many passing allusions to our New World Order - quickly dispelled. Woods is inclined to hug close to the original.
What this production offers instead is a bright and energetic ensemble in which Mark O'Regan, Rory Nolan, Peter Daly and Janet Moran stand out in unflagging performances across several roles. Frawley delivers several fleet-footed set pieces - a bristling cabaret, a cardboard box city, O'Regan's hilarious and rather beautiful dance of death - but, at a continuous two hours, the pace inevitably sags. The space is unevenly utilised, the cast's movements become unsteady, their singing more shaky.
The final appearance of Ubu's boat is a dispiriting sight, ending more on a whimper than bang, and that thickens our suspicion that the ambitious production simply ran out of time, or money, or inspiration. Much of this may improve as the run continues. Lord knows the Ubus have gotten out of worse scrapes. Peter Crawley
Two Rooms, Andrews Lane Studio, Dublin
Lee Blessing's play, first produced in 1993, is still hot off the topical Middle East griddle. Michael, a US professor kidnapped in Beirut, is now a solitary captive in a drab cell. His wife Lainie, at home in the US, has stripped his office bare, and by staying in it tries to simulate his living conditions, a way to be with him.
But if Michael is out of sight, Lainie is not, and she is besieged by the play's two other characters. Walker is a crusading journalist hostile to the government's policy of non-negotiation. He believes that hostages could be saved, and that the administration's policy motives are suspect.
Then there is Ellen, a cool, sophisticated agent of the State Department, who wants Lainie to play the official game - ie keep her mouth shut.
The play has its layers. Most obvious is the mutual attachment of the couple, underpinning the illusions of a widow whose husband has not yet died. She wishes only to lead an imaginary life with him in his - now their - cave.
Walker has career and crusade to divert him into a measure of exploitation, and Ellen's glacial logic is proof against humane promptings. A high point is the soliloquy in which she analyses the enemy, themselves hostages to their country and conditions, persuaded that if they lose, they win.
Ann Sheehy and Simon Coury give solid performances as the oppressed couple, but the play has more meat to offer the two outsiders. Phelim Drew blazes as the complex reporter on the hunt for his exclusive report, and Una Kavanagh's magnetic portrayal touches nerves with her calculating assessments.
Mary Moynihan directs with a true feel for her material.
Runs to July 29th. Gerry Colgan
