The Ubu Plays (NHB Drama Classics): The Ubu Plays: King Ubu, Cuckold Ubu & Slave Ubu (NHB Classic Plays) - Softcover

Alfred Jarry; Kenneth McLeish

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854591894 ISBN 13: 9781854591890

Publisher: Nick Hern Books, 1997

Synopsis

Number Thirty in NHB's Drama Classics Series, providing the world's great drama at a great price.

The introduction to this edition of The Ubu Plays includes a short biography of Alfred Jarry and chronology of his work; a guide to what happens in the play; a short history of the play and its context; and a brief guide to content, language, form and themes.

The satirical farces now acclaimed as the touchstone for the Dada and Surrealist movements, the Theatre of the Absurd, and much of the rest of experimental theatre in the 20th century. These three plays follow the adventures of Pa and Ma Ubu in their absurd world. King Ubu, the best known of the three, mirrors Macbeth as Ubu ousts the King, becomes a tyrant and is finally killed. This volume also includes Cuckold Ubu and Slave Ubu.

Translated and introduced by Kenneth McLeish.

About this title

Review:

Its lunatic grotesquerie is brilliantly caught in McLeish's new translation... Exhilaratingly combines the erudite with the lavatorial... classical parody and surreal farce anticipating avant-garde art as well as the Goons and Monty Python. --Guardian

About the Author:

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1854591894
• ISBN 13: 9781854591890
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96