QUOTE
Rebel without a clue
Playwright Alfred Jarry was theatre's answer to Johnny Rotten. How could someone so talentless be so influential, asks Dominic Dromgoole
Wednesday November 16, 2005
The Guardian
On December 10 1896 at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in Paris, an actor named Firmin Gémier strode down to the front of the stage, looked out over the mincily sophisticated Parisian crowd, and shouted at the top of his voice, "Shit!" (Or "Merde!" to be precise.) Many would have us believe that theatre was never the same again.
He was playing the lead in a new play, Ubu Roi, by a peculiar young malcontent from the west of Normandy, Alfred Jarry. The play enjoyed a weird genesis. Eight years before, Jarry had sat down in a classroom in a Rennes lycée, under the tutelage of a Monsieur Hebert. It is hard to think of another physics teacher who has had such a seismic effect on culture. Jarry and his friend, Henri Morin, delighted in inventing and writing down episodes in which this man, redubbed "le Pere Ebe", suffered protracted agonies and embarrassments as king of a make-believe Poland. It's a standard schoolboy tactic - take a loathed authority figure, make him behave in the most degrading manner possible, and simultaneously drench him in shame and blood and shit. Ubu is one of the first examples of a student prank being translated into something considered a major work of art.
Jarry incubated the project over a number of years, adding further episodes, and imposing on it a pseudo-Shakespearean structure. He begged theatres to put it on, and once he succeeded, he got the reaction he desired. The audience jeered and screamed at the play, and at each other. Fist-fights broke out, which were later transcribed into print as critics fought it out over whether the play was an ordered work of art or a work of arty ordure. Jarry had the sort of succès de scandale that only the French can cook up, and he spent the rest of his short life as a fin-de-siècle Johnny Rotten, until absinthe rotted his internal organs away.
It is tempting to turn the tables and shout "Shit!" at Jarry's play now. You could call him a one-trick pony, but that might exaggerate his versatility. He wrote two further plays, Ubu Cocu and Ubu Enchaine, which, as their titles suggest, didn't massively extend his range. He had a remarkable lack of ability as a playwright - no ear for speech, no complex psychology, no sense of texture, no narrative purpose. His ability to spin his one gift, for wilful outrage, into a passable imitation of genius is the reason why he is the patron saint of the talentless. Any of the many 20th-century writers who can't write, but can manufacture studenty confections that other begrudging folk will talk up as art, has Alfred Jarry to thank.
Simultaneously, across EuroFuckyLand, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw and Wilde were throwing up work on slightly surer foundations. They shared Jarry's critical eye for the present moment, but had a desire to do more than just shout abuse at it. They also had the sense of a future being built, which sits in every moment of their plays. Jarry was nothing but a snarling, sniggering, silly voice screeching from the edges. As his play continues, Ubu achieves his ambition of becoming the king of Poland, before then bleeding it dry of finances and life, then being deposed by the advancing Russian army. As he murders and pillages and connives all the way, you keep hoping for one brief moment of complexity or contrapuntal energy. But it never comes. The consistency is admirable, but consistency isn't in itself a mark of genius.
The legacy of Ubu is pervasive. Throughout the 20th century he became an iconic allegorical figure. His singleness of purpose rendered him a convenient one-size-fits-all metaphorical leader. He stood in variously for Stalin, Hitler, Mao, in socially telling political productions, rapidly becoming one of the great dictator lookeelikees. This seems an odd distortion, since Ubu is actually not that interested in power for power's sake, and is much closer to the old English figure of the Lord of Misrule. He is a persistent anarch, a thug, a vandal, with little desire for control, simply a grotesque appetite for more bigger cakes now. If he has a closer parallel, it is more truly with the present forest fire of rampant consumerism, his analogous figures not dictators, more the supersized monsters of mall-world, guzzling their way through rainforests of boxes and whole horizons teeming with cattle.
The inheritance he left behind as a seminal dramatic figure is profound. His explosion of naturalism proved an iconic event for anyone else who couldn't write dialogue or shape a scene. The dadaists and surrealists of the early 20th century acknowledged their debt to him, as did the German expressionists of the 1920s and 1930s. Beyond them, Jarry could accept much of the responsibility for the weird cul-de-sac that was the Theatre of the Absurd of the 1940s and 1950s. Boris Vian, NF Simpson and Ionesco would all view him as their dramaturgical grandaddy. There's a whole heap of plays, rarely revived now, and with good reason, which only make sense as the result of a self-involved formalist experiment, and as a reaction to the terrible dehumanising events of the 20th century. Each movement - dadaism, surrealism and the absurd - was a vitalising force in terms of expanding the field of possibilities. Their influence on Beckett and Pinter and many of the other calmer voices was significant. But the plays themselves amount to little more than a man screaming gibberish in a wood. To some that is the sum of human nature, to others it is just a man screaming in a wood.
The sad and unloved great-grandchildren of the Ubu plays are scattered all over EuroFuckyLand now. Whenever you see a cast list that numbers among its characters the Philosopher, the Policeman, the Poet, the Prostitute and the Politician, and when the curtain goes up on a heavily allegorical setting, then you know you are in the presence of those who worship at the Ubu shrine. I once saw a play in Romania called Toilet. All of the above characters featured, and when the curtain went up, there was a double gasp. Not only were we in a toilet for the whole evening, but yes! The toilet was also the shape of Romania.
The same wrong-headedness accounts for much of the persistent infantilism of French theatrical culture, polarised hopelessly between the boulevard charm of the commercial theatre and the further reaches of the avant garde. Any trip to Avignon will confirm a theatre being deprived of oxygen by the dead hand of director's theatre. Brilliant and beautiful productions troop in one after the other with dazzling theatrical imagery, and no connection with their audience, nor any particular desire to connect with their audience. Ubu was designed to blast through the constipation of the French, and forge a new connection; the many Ubuisms that have followed have done little but reblock the same derrière.
Yet for all that, there remains something wild and delightful about Ubu itself. It is appropriate that the second productions were all in marionette theatres, since it has the vicious energy of a Punch and Judy show. The relationship between Pere and Mere Ubu follows in that tradition of love expressed as savage and undying enmity. They insult each other remorselessly, and with the exuberant invention of deep loathing. Their brooding distrust of each other never flags. The sheer lack of sentimentality carries its own exhilaration. Ubu himself is a compelling study of pathological violence. At one moment a timorous coward, hiding from a raised voice, at the next a Viking berserk, hurling himself into danger and smashing to a pulp whatever blood or bone is in his path.
There are also the benefits of iconoclasm itself on this scale. Artistic rebellion at a certain pitch of courage - or produced by folk so steeped in absinthe they don't know what courage is any more - provides its own reward. Simply forcing the door open into the modern, and being the first to walk in new rooms, creates an energy. Ubu is full of that delirious freedom.
The punk desire to howl the house down shouldn't create anything enduring, but it does. Will Never Mind the Bollocks stand up in 500 years' time, if there are enough cockroaches left around to pogo to it on their mini-iPods? For all that it's a pile of naive, posey, opportunistic twaddle, the answer is still undoubtedly yes. And will they enact Ubu with puppets on their blasted waste-grounds? Probably.
· The Young Vic's production of Ubu the King is at the Barbican, London EC2, until December 10. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
Playwright Alfred Jarry was theatre's answer to Johnny Rotten. How could someone so talentless be so influential, asks Dominic Dromgoole
Wednesday November 16, 2005
The Guardian
On December 10 1896 at the Théâtre de l'Oeuvre in Paris, an actor named Firmin Gémier strode down to the front of the stage, looked out over the mincily sophisticated Parisian crowd, and shouted at the top of his voice, "Shit!" (Or "Merde!" to be precise.) Many would have us believe that theatre was never the same again.
He was playing the lead in a new play, Ubu Roi, by a peculiar young malcontent from the west of Normandy, Alfred Jarry. The play enjoyed a weird genesis. Eight years before, Jarry had sat down in a classroom in a Rennes lycée, under the tutelage of a Monsieur Hebert. It is hard to think of another physics teacher who has had such a seismic effect on culture. Jarry and his friend, Henri Morin, delighted in inventing and writing down episodes in which this man, redubbed "le Pere Ebe", suffered protracted agonies and embarrassments as king of a make-believe Poland. It's a standard schoolboy tactic - take a loathed authority figure, make him behave in the most degrading manner possible, and simultaneously drench him in shame and blood and shit. Ubu is one of the first examples of a student prank being translated into something considered a major work of art.
Jarry incubated the project over a number of years, adding further episodes, and imposing on it a pseudo-Shakespearean structure. He begged theatres to put it on, and once he succeeded, he got the reaction he desired. The audience jeered and screamed at the play, and at each other. Fist-fights broke out, which were later transcribed into print as critics fought it out over whether the play was an ordered work of art or a work of arty ordure. Jarry had the sort of succès de scandale that only the French can cook up, and he spent the rest of his short life as a fin-de-siècle Johnny Rotten, until absinthe rotted his internal organs away.
It is tempting to turn the tables and shout "Shit!" at Jarry's play now. You could call him a one-trick pony, but that might exaggerate his versatility. He wrote two further plays, Ubu Cocu and Ubu Enchaine, which, as their titles suggest, didn't massively extend his range. He had a remarkable lack of ability as a playwright - no ear for speech, no complex psychology, no sense of texture, no narrative purpose. His ability to spin his one gift, for wilful outrage, into a passable imitation of genius is the reason why he is the patron saint of the talentless. Any of the many 20th-century writers who can't write, but can manufacture studenty confections that other begrudging folk will talk up as art, has Alfred Jarry to thank.
Simultaneously, across EuroFuckyLand, Ibsen, Chekhov, Strindberg, Shaw and Wilde were throwing up work on slightly surer foundations. They shared Jarry's critical eye for the present moment, but had a desire to do more than just shout abuse at it. They also had the sense of a future being built, which sits in every moment of their plays. Jarry was nothing but a snarling, sniggering, silly voice screeching from the edges. As his play continues, Ubu achieves his ambition of becoming the king of Poland, before then bleeding it dry of finances and life, then being deposed by the advancing Russian army. As he murders and pillages and connives all the way, you keep hoping for one brief moment of complexity or contrapuntal energy. But it never comes. The consistency is admirable, but consistency isn't in itself a mark of genius.
The legacy of Ubu is pervasive. Throughout the 20th century he became an iconic allegorical figure. His singleness of purpose rendered him a convenient one-size-fits-all metaphorical leader. He stood in variously for Stalin, Hitler, Mao, in socially telling political productions, rapidly becoming one of the great dictator lookeelikees. This seems an odd distortion, since Ubu is actually not that interested in power for power's sake, and is much closer to the old English figure of the Lord of Misrule. He is a persistent anarch, a thug, a vandal, with little desire for control, simply a grotesque appetite for more bigger cakes now. If he has a closer parallel, it is more truly with the present forest fire of rampant consumerism, his analogous figures not dictators, more the supersized monsters of mall-world, guzzling their way through rainforests of boxes and whole horizons teeming with cattle.
The inheritance he left behind as a seminal dramatic figure is profound. His explosion of naturalism proved an iconic event for anyone else who couldn't write dialogue or shape a scene. The dadaists and surrealists of the early 20th century acknowledged their debt to him, as did the German expressionists of the 1920s and 1930s. Beyond them, Jarry could accept much of the responsibility for the weird cul-de-sac that was the Theatre of the Absurd of the 1940s and 1950s. Boris Vian, NF Simpson and Ionesco would all view him as their dramaturgical grandaddy. There's a whole heap of plays, rarely revived now, and with good reason, which only make sense as the result of a self-involved formalist experiment, and as a reaction to the terrible dehumanising events of the 20th century. Each movement - dadaism, surrealism and the absurd - was a vitalising force in terms of expanding the field of possibilities. Their influence on Beckett and Pinter and many of the other calmer voices was significant. But the plays themselves amount to little more than a man screaming gibberish in a wood. To some that is the sum of human nature, to others it is just a man screaming in a wood.
The sad and unloved great-grandchildren of the Ubu plays are scattered all over EuroFuckyLand now. Whenever you see a cast list that numbers among its characters the Philosopher, the Policeman, the Poet, the Prostitute and the Politician, and when the curtain goes up on a heavily allegorical setting, then you know you are in the presence of those who worship at the Ubu shrine. I once saw a play in Romania called Toilet. All of the above characters featured, and when the curtain went up, there was a double gasp. Not only were we in a toilet for the whole evening, but yes! The toilet was also the shape of Romania.
The same wrong-headedness accounts for much of the persistent infantilism of French theatrical culture, polarised hopelessly between the boulevard charm of the commercial theatre and the further reaches of the avant garde. Any trip to Avignon will confirm a theatre being deprived of oxygen by the dead hand of director's theatre. Brilliant and beautiful productions troop in one after the other with dazzling theatrical imagery, and no connection with their audience, nor any particular desire to connect with their audience. Ubu was designed to blast through the constipation of the French, and forge a new connection; the many Ubuisms that have followed have done little but reblock the same derrière.
Yet for all that, there remains something wild and delightful about Ubu itself. It is appropriate that the second productions were all in marionette theatres, since it has the vicious energy of a Punch and Judy show. The relationship between Pere and Mere Ubu follows in that tradition of love expressed as savage and undying enmity. They insult each other remorselessly, and with the exuberant invention of deep loathing. Their brooding distrust of each other never flags. The sheer lack of sentimentality carries its own exhilaration. Ubu himself is a compelling study of pathological violence. At one moment a timorous coward, hiding from a raised voice, at the next a Viking berserk, hurling himself into danger and smashing to a pulp whatever blood or bone is in his path.
There are also the benefits of iconoclasm itself on this scale. Artistic rebellion at a certain pitch of courage - or produced by folk so steeped in absinthe they don't know what courage is any more - provides its own reward. Simply forcing the door open into the modern, and being the first to walk in new rooms, creates an energy. Ubu is full of that delirious freedom.
The punk desire to howl the house down shouldn't create anything enduring, but it does. Will Never Mind the Bollocks stand up in 500 years' time, if there are enough cockroaches left around to pogo to it on their mini-iPods? For all that it's a pile of naive, posey, opportunistic twaddle, the answer is still undoubtedly yes. And will they enact Ubu with puppets on their blasted waste-grounds? Probably.
· The Young Vic's production of Ubu the King is at the Barbican, London EC2, until December 10. Box office: 020-7638 8891.