The director of a company that has become a legend in the performing arts world revisits a work that changed how theatre was made. In this production, chaos, ambition and cruelty show their ugly faces over an elegant dinner at a sophisticated French home.
In 1896, Alfred Jarry caused enormous scandal with his savage portrait of a cruel, cowardly tyrant whose ambition knew no limits. It is difficult to recapture even a small part of the controversy that Jarry’s play originally aroused, but the director of the British theatre company Cheek by Jowl does just that by working with a cast of French actors and setting the action of Ubu Roi in the domestic environment of a sophisticated bourgeois dinner. In the imagination of the son, a rebellious, camcorder-clutching teenager, his parents become Père and Mère Ubu, their guests, the victims of the eponymous tyrant’s lust for power. True, the action takes place in a bourgeois dining-room with cream-coloured furniture. However, in Donnellan’s hands, a kitchen roll, a pepper mill or an ice cube can easily become symbols of power that remind us we are in the realm of Ubu Roi.
Autoria: Alfred Jarry; Direcció i dramatúrgia: Declan Donnellan; Escenografia: Nick Ormerod; Intèrprets: Xavier Boiffier, Camille Cayol, Vincent de Boüard, Christophe Grégoire, Cécile Leterme, Sylvain Levitte; Direcció associada: Michelangelo Marchese, Jane Gibson; Moviment: Jane Gibson; Disseny d'il·luminació: Pascal Noel ; Composició musical: Davy Sladek, amb músiques addicionals de Paddy Cunneen ; Disseny de vídeo: Benoit Simon, Quentin Vigier; Supervisió de vestuari: Angie Burns; Ajudant de direcció: Bertrand Lesca; Traducció dels sobretítols: Jordi Lladó i Vilaseca; Producció executiva local: Trànsit Projectes;
