Ubu the King

SNT Drama Ljubljana

Première: 30. 1. 2016, SNT Drama Ljubljana
Running time 2 hours 40 minutes. One interval.

Director Jernej Lorenci
Dramaturg Matic Starina
Set designer Branko Hojnik
Costume designer Belinda Radulović
Composer and quotations selector Branko Rožman
Lighting designer Pascal Mérat
Choreographer Gregor Luštek
Language consultant Tatjana Stanič
Assistant to dramaturg Katja Markič

Cast
Papa Ubu Jernej Šugman
Mama Ubu Nina Valič
Capetain Bordure Bojan Emeršič
Big Priest Jurij Zrnec
Klemen Slakonja Klemen Slakonja
Minister Sabina Kogovšek
Financier Boris Mihalj
Judge / The Big One Gregor Zorc as guest
Negro / The Little One Žan Perko as guest

Each epoch has its own King Ubu. Lorenci’s production generates its own vision of today’s brutality and primitivism, no less lively than these were at the time of the inception of Jarry’s play Ubu the King (1896).
Besides the many emblems that it acquired, among them a symbol of the attack on the bourgeois self-sufficiency, the scandal that divided the audience following the 1896 première performance of Ubu the King unexpectedly heralded the developments in the 20th and apparently also in the 21^st century both in the fields of art and social life. In the arts, Ubu the King foretold the avant-garde movements that did away with traditional forms: Surrealism, Dadaism as well as the theatre and the drama of the Absurd and the subsequent Ludism. Moreover, it anticipated to the society the campaign of greed and brutal slaughter. And all this in the shape of a wanton and rowdy play searing abundantly with unrestrained black humour.
The reckless, greedy, gluttonous yet in truth cowardly Papa Ubu, incited by his wife, Mama Ubu – a parodied version of Lady Macbeth – to brutally seize power and govern in an even crueller and more totalitarian manner, evokes many allusions.

"The Ubu collective led by the director Jernej Lorenci enacts a ruthless and reckless black-humour play without restraints, holding the mirror in front of the world while at once being equally merciless towards itself. The inner motives that by social rules are accounted for as (in the least) immoral and thus are rather unheeded are here in the unimpeded company of numerous reckless deeds and hate speech of an open kind that we only encounter in private situations or in anonymous comments on the Internet where it is most frequently censored. The knife stabs both the human traits and fully concrete situations and persons.”

Nika Arhar, Delo, 1 February 2016

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan

Photo: Peter Uhan