 |
|
Absurdity
in action: the Firlefanz puppets.
Photo:
Tim Cahill
|
Puppet
Regime
By
Ann Morrow
Ubu
Rex
By
Alfred Jarry, adapted and directed by Oakley Hall III
Firlefanz Puppets, Steamer No. 10 Theatre, Jan.9
‘You
stink, Ubu,” says Ma Ubu. That opinion is a comical understatement,
and in Ubu Rex, under- stated—and underhanded—comedy
abounds. Ubu is a tyrant and an ogre, and Ma Ubu is his opportunistic
wife; together they bicker and scheme for power in a fictionalized
Eastern Europe. Ubu Rex was written by Alfred Jarry,
a pioneer of the Theater of the Absurd more than a hundred
years ago. But as adapted and directed by Oakley Hall III
at Steamer No. 10, the play’s political satire proved its
timelessness—and having the characters enacted by puppets
is so in keeping with its gonzo mayhem that it’s not surprising
that even in Jarry’s own time live actors were replaced by
marionettes. Last weekend, collaborator Ed Atkeson and his
Firlefanz puppet troupe produced a perfect fit of puppetry,
staging and voicing, even for the play’s most challenging
action scenes. And there’s a lot of action: In a lampoon of
the insanity of political ideologies dominating society, the
id-dominated Ubu destroys an entire realm.
In the opening act, Ubu (voice by Steven Patterson) bemoans
his lack of status. Once a king, he is now a dragoon in Poland.
With the appalled but greedy support of his wife (voice by
G.G. Roberts) and his loyal henchman, McTurdy (voice by Joe
Kraussman), Ubu hatches a plot to murder good king Wenceslas
and take the throne—and the royal treasury. But even before
the murder most foul (Jarry’s play has echoes of Macbeth
and other Shakespearean tragedies), the Ubus’ putrid personalities
are hilariously established, with tremendous credit going
to Patterson’s whiny, childlike voice and nimble phrasing
and Robert’s acid-dripped, yodel-hoo cadences. Voicing is
especially important considering the play’s syllabic humor:
Hall’s modernized dialogue is a mix of infantile outbursts
(“I wanna make some laws now!” wails Ubu before killing all
the judges) and tongue-twisting, sophisticated verbiage (such
as a play on “veracity” and “voracity,” rhymed with “indigestibility,”
in a scene involving a bear attack in a cave), and provided
nonstop, thought-provoking amusement (as when Ma Ubu explains
to her simpleton husband that if he doesn’t distribute some
treasure to the starving populace the people won’t have any
money for him to collect as taxes).
At once gruesome and winsome (like the play itself), the puppet
cast ranged from the life-size Ubus with their Mr. Potato
Head-shaped faces and roly-poly bodies (the rotund puppets
were maneuvered on wheels) to the nobly realistic head of
the king, to the bizarre visages of a multitude of minor characters,
including the phallic face of Ma Ubu’s gigolo and the tiny,
floppy-legged financiers who are executed in a boiling vat.
One especially whimsical touch was a scepter made from a rubber-strip
mop, with similar strips being used for the hair of brave
and rebellious Prince Buggerlass (voice by Greg Haymes). The
minimalist set design was effectively evocative, especially
with the play’s rapid changes in locations. In between acts,
characters sometimes “es caped” from jail or other predicaments
by creeping around the front of the closed curtain.
Equally important to the production’s raucous tension was
the soundtrack by composer Mary Jane Leach (with programming
assistance by Michael Eck), in which the comic placement of
well-known compositions such as the William Tell Overture
and the Hallelujah Chorus were further demented by being atmospherically
distorted. But as enjoyable as the production was in all its
Fractured Fairy Tales-style elements, it didn’t lose
sight that Ubu’s signature line—“Isn’t injustice just as good
as justice?”—is more than a farcical one-liner.
|
Site
Search 
