A Garbled Communiqué
Paris youth are revolting in Cutting Ball’s verbose dystopian French play. My review‘s in the Marin Independent Journal.
Ubu Victorious
Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi can be an irritating classic. A seminal avant-garde work that informed later movements such as Surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd, Ubu famously set off a riot at its 1896 premiere in Paris with its first line: “Merdre,” a mutated French cuss word with an extra letter, often translated as “Pshit” or “Shittr” in English (“Tashit” in the new Cutting Ball Theater version). The titular Father Ubu says that phrase over and over in the play, along with other nonsensical oaths such as “By my green candle!” The humor is scatological and often silly, the plot—such as it is—meandering. An absurd parody of Macbeth with stray elements of other Shakespeare plays, it features the childish and gluttonous Father Ubu murdering the king of Poland to seize power, and then killing all the other nobles and taking all their money.
Bitter Swede Symphony
The Cutting Ball Theater is performing all five of August
Strindberg‘s Chamber Plays in rep (the first time it’s been done in any language), and I tell you all about it in today’s Marin Independent Journal, reporting back on the first installment, The Ghost Sonata. I will say that it makes me awfully jazzed to see the rest of them. Read more
