Cheek by Jowl

Alfred Jarry’s menacing depiction of a despot was outlawed after its first performance in 1896. Causing outrage with scandalous language and animalistic brutality, its satire showed the worst excesses of greed and abuse of power.

Ubu has seized control of a kingdom, abetted by his equally monstrous wife. But an invading army threatens his petty dictatorship. ‘Exhilaratingly fresh’ (Independent), this version is set within the civilised chic of a bourgeois dinner party. Any veneer of respectability soon fades into a hallucinatory parade of the grotesque.