Ubu Plays by Alfred Jarry

Ubu Plays by Alfred Jarry

A new translation by Rob Melrose of the classic play Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. Ubu Roi has divided audiences into passionate, dissenting camps since its 1896 premiere in Paris, an event that changed theater forever. With the first word of the play the audience erupted in pandemonium. People stormed the exits as fist fights broke out. Ubu was a scatological mockery that challenged assumptions about good taste and good behavior, a performance that questioned the very nature of theater and divided the audience between those who came expecting the ordinary and those who came hoping for the extraordinary. Now Ubu is seen as the precursor of the theatre of the absurd and playwrights like Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Jean Genet. Rob Melrose's new translation brings out the Shakespearean echoes of Ubu while using words from classic American comedy to get the Punch and Judy feel.

Alfred Jarry (1873-1907) was a French writer, best known for his 1896 farce Ubu Roi, which began as a collaborative schoolboy satire on a physics teacher and is often considered to be a forerunner to the surrealist theatre movement of the early twentieth century. With its savage mockery of the French bourgeoisie and blatant disregard for theatrical form and convention, Jarry's work also influenced the Theatre of the Absurd.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780413679901
ISBN 10	041367990X
Title	Ubu Plays
Author	Alfred Jarry
Series	World Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	1993-10-11
Number of pages	176
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.