Ubu Roi NYC Reviews and Tickets

"It’s impossible not to be transfixed by the raging force of its energy...What makes this 'Ubu Roi' more than a clever riff on a period piece is its sense of the raw, ravening anger in the boy’s satirical vision. The show’s penultimate scene hits you like a blast of dirty, icy water. It’s an all-too-relevant reminder that the asocial fury and confusion we tend to think as just a passing phase (he’ll grow out of it) among teenagers does, on occasion, give birth to truly murderous monsters."
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"'Make no mistake: It’s a punk play...The problem is Jarry’s nihilistic masterwork is completely gonzo, with made-up words, grotesque characters and outlandish plot developments that make it hard to stage. Luckily, Donnellan found a great way around that...There’s a thin line between order and chaos, and it’s often darkly funny."
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"“School-boy humour” tends to get a bad press. But where would theatre be without it? As a golden opportunity arises to watch Cheek by Jowl’s acclaimed production of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi – seize it! – it feels only right to bow and scrape a bit before Jarry’s seminal act of juvenile disrespect."
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"Amusing, slightly exhausting production...But Donnellan, who is one of the most inventive directors alive, and his designer, Nick Ormerod, rescue the evening from glibness by visually and verbally switching the point of view."
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"The brilliance and intelligence but also the fun of Director Donnellan's wise, ticklish staging is that it out-does Jarry himself. By interweaving scenes of an unruffled dinner with the maniacal explosion of subterranean force – Donnellan permits himself not only to match the Surrealism of Jarry’s original, but in some ways to better or advance it."
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"This radical spin has its tongue in its cheek, a snigger in its jowl and an accent on showing the bourgeoisie going bonkers. The show is perfectly judged. If the cast seem to having more fun than the audience, it’s nonetheless no boo-boo, this Ubu."
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"How do you recapture the shock impact of Alfred Jarry's 1896 play, with its savage portrait of a grotesque monster? Declan Donnellan has had a brilliant idea in this production: he plays it as the Oedipal fantasy of a camcorder-clutching teenager taking revenge on his parents and their French bourgeois world."
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"Director Donnellan’s idea is to set the play inside a bourgeois dinner party...Playwright Jarry’s attack on greed and corruption is not subtle, and even a production as eerily elegant as Donnellan’s can’t prevent ennui setting in. Yet this excellently acted production is full of witty theatrical flourishes."
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