Ubu on the Table

Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s once notoriously obscene, Shakespearean satire of power and greed, is given an imaginative puppet staging in this small-scale epic. Théâtre de la Pire Espèce cast kitchen utensils and condiments as kings, queens and European armies, using a simple black tabletop as the battleground for tomato-spattered warfare.

It’s these absurd limits that the Canadian company sets on the show—how can a baguette with forks stuck in it stand in for the entire Polish army?—that allows them to get a handle on the play’s own limitless absurdity, which often seems to require a frame of sorts to truly work.

There are definite echoes of Forced Entertainment’s recent Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare, in which the experimental performers staged 36 of the Bard’s works with common household items, drawing attention to the imaginative act of theatre. There’s a similar strategy at play here, though with more fun and showmanship. As an audience, we have to work to imaginatively co-create the drama, but it’s the bantering relationship between the two puppetmasters—flinging insults at each other as well as cutlery—that really hooks us into the game.

Jarry’s provocative depravity is joyfully mined for its slapstick, gross-out potential as the table in question becomes more and more stained. But uproariously silly and full of ingenious quirks as it is, Ubu on the Table is perhaps a little too light-hearted for the politics of Jarry’s play to shine through, and its darker side is glossed over in all the food-fight frivolity.