Alfred Jarry's Ubu Plays: Absurdity, Power, and the Roots of Modern Avant-Garde Theater
- David Lapadat
- Nov 22
- 4 min read
Alfred Jarry's Ubu cycle erupts as a wild thrust into the absurd, a set of three plays that forever altered our confrontations with authority and disorder on stage.
Emerging from a teenage jest in 1896, these pieces—Ubu Roi, Ubu Cocu, and Ubu Enchaîné—catapulted Jarry into infamy, merging crude laughter with deeper inquiries.
Beyond the uproar, though, what endures?
(That uproar's lingering effect on his wider body of work surfaces later).
Table of Contents
Ubu Roi unleashes Père Ubu, a swollen despot whose avarice consumes all. The curtain rises on a notorious curse—"Merdre!"—a corrupted "shit" that demolished Parisian propriety.
Far from empty provocation, it strikes at middle-class pretensions, recalling the unbridled mockery in Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, where overindulgence exposes mortal weaknesses.
The narrative races ahead: spurred by Mère Ubu, he slays King Venceslas of Poland to claim the crown.
A frenzy of brutality ensues—levies extracted through limb-severing, conflicts fought on makeshift steeds.
Those initial moments pulse with vitality, Ubu's foolishness reflecting actual rulers. A surge of excitement hits, the sort that arises when mockery cuts to the bone, akin to Swift's A Modest Proposal unveiling cultural decay through hyperbole.
As momentum gathers, disorder surges into a flood. Clashes melt into crude antics, loyalties drift like grains.
Thrilling initially, but by the ursine assault and banishment, the whirlwind fatigues.
Could this intentional excess reflect power's inherent nonsense?
Or does it challenge viewers' stamina, similar to Beckett's Waiting for Godot testing patience amid the void?
Psychological dimensions stand out.
Ubu incarnates Freud's unchecked id, a being of raw urges devouring foes and fortunes.
Jarry, however, precedes Freud, possibly channeling Nietzsche's drive for dominance, warped into clownery.
This blend of thought and tomfoolery distinguishes Ubu Roi, paving the way for Dadaists who later shredded art amid World War I's ruins.
The opening night's melee—punches thrown, reviewers raging—solidified Jarry's myth. Yeats, present there, mourned tragedy's demise.
But perhaps it signaled a genesis?
(Keep that in mind while delving into the follow-ups.)
Ubu Roi: Tyranny's Grotesque Symphony
Ubu Roi kicks off with vigor, a blade against tradition.
The framework rejects Aristotelian coherence, episodes bounding like hallucinations. Jarry's 'pataphysics'—his satirical science of fanciful fixes—permeates the speech, terms contorted into barbs. Rereading it brings laughs at Ubu's "hornstrumpot" slurs, though the echoes grate, mirroring how autocrats echo their fantasies.
Historically, this 1896 launch anticipated modernism's tremors while heralding them.
Consider Artaud's Theater of Cruelty amplifying such raw onslaughts, reducing performance to its elemental fury.
Envision Ubu as an early Kafka figure, administration morphed into predation. Unlike Kafka's understated terror, Jarry's splashes boldly.
Turmoil crests in Act IV, reason evaporating—forces scattered by folly. It launches powerfully, drawing you in with defiance, yet unravels into weariness, prompting questions about whether Jarry meant depletion as commentary.
If Ubu Roi surges with propulsion, what occurs when that momentum shatters more?
Ubu Cocu: Nonsense Unchained or Labyrinth Lost?
Ubu Cocu, drafted around 1897-98 and performed after Jarry's death, swerves into utter mayhem.
Ubu contends with betrayal here, a motif Jarry distorts into abstract comedy.
Achras, fixated on many-sided shapes, shelters Ubu, who plots against phantom cheats. The storyline?
A jumble: drain dives, inner voices as vermin. Nonsense prevails, yet purposeful—Jarry explores self's malleability, echoing Pirandello's roles in Six Characters in Search of an Author, rebelling against authorship.
It bewilders, phrases curling like endless bands. Ubu's suspicion aligns with delusion studies, perhaps Lacan's fractured self-image run amok. Still, the whimsy drifts anchorless, missing Roi's pointed edge.
Artistically, it resonates with Symbolist trials, Jarry's marionettes and disguises foreshadowing Expressionism's warped visions.
Dominated by "nonsense"—wordplay descending into riddles, deeds into irrelevancies.
Breakthrough or excess? Against Lewis Carroll's Alice adventures, where caprice conceals puzzles, Cocu provides scarcer grips.
Ubu probing his inner voice yields macabre amusement, though redundancy nears dullness.
Sparks emerge: self-referential touches, figures conscious of staging, foretelling Brecht's distancing technique.
This splintering echoes Jarry's declining existence—drink, destitution—but connections to his neglected creations arise shortly.
What if Ubu, ambition shed, welcomed bondage?
Ubu Enchaîné: Submission's Subtle Sting
Ubu Enchaîné (1900) streamlines, with Ubu opting for bondage over command.
Reversing Roi's oppression, Ubu lands in France, pledging servitude to evade duty. He enlists in the "Free Men," an ironic labor chain. The thrust? Muted, swapped for wry obedience. Simpler than Roi, it forfeits that primal surge, delivering sharp pokes at liberty's deceptions.
It echoes softly, Ubu's inertia contrasting prior bluster. It summons Camus' futile champion in The Myth of Sisyphus, accepting pointlessness. Jarry adds wit—Ubu's "bondage" sparks odd advancements.
Literarily, it links to Ionesco's Rhinoceros, conformity swallowing uniqueness. Form tightens, segments progressing deliberately, sidestepping Cocu's scatter. Absent Roi's tumult, vigor wanes, yielding thoughtful residue.
Ubu's creed—"Better a slave than a master"—overturns hierarchies, scrutinizing Rousseau's pact via buffoonery. Captivating in flashes, like judgment sequences, but restraint dulls the punch.
This shift from oppressor to bondsman frames Jarry's series as a conceptual curve, though renown might eclipse his finer treasures.
The Ubu Legacy: Avant-Garde Catalyst and Forgotten Facets
Jarry's Ubu plays blaze with novelty, planting seeds for 20th-century vanguard movements. Ubu Roi's tumult birthed modernism's fractures—Surrealism's visions,
Futurism's mechanisms, all rooting back to this whimsical core.
Ripples extend: stage as clash, not refuge, shaping Pinter's ominous silences or Genet's ceremonial flips.
The scandal—debut tumults, Jarry's quirky path (cycle fixations, green liquor fog)—masks his books and verses.
Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician shines as a jewel, a 'pataphysical voyage matching Joyce's Ulysses in ingenuity.
Verses in Minutes de sable mémorial interlace Symbolist finesse with stark borders, mental abysses untouched in the dramas.
Returning to Ubu reveals Jarry's solitude, a seer outpacing his era, much like van Gogh in visuals—misread, yet pivotal.
The sequence ignites fiercely, fragments into disarray, then hushes, paralleling mortal drive's path.
Recall that initial uproar's veil?
It pigeonholed Jarry as instigator, entombing his textual scope.
Unearth the prose; it seals the circuit on his brilliance.
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