Ubu Plays Book

I've been curious about Ubu Roi for years. Probably very influential in the development of Surrealism, DADA, Theater of the Absurd, and more. Certainly more influential than any other 19th-century French puppet play.

While it might still be fun to see Ubu Roi performed "live" by puppets, it is not very funny on the page, unless you really love puns about poo-poo. However, the third play, Ubu Enchained actually is funny even on the page, and could be hilarious live. In this play we see more mature writing. Though there are plenty of pee-pee jokes, the inversions of logic is what makes this funny. Ubu no longer wants to be king and now tries to become a slave, though his idea of serving his masters is pretty strange.

Another reviewer took the trouble to type in one of the funny bits. Here is a shortened version THREE FREE MEN: .... Let's not forget, it's our duty to be free. Hey! Not so fast, or we might arrive on time. Freedom means never arriving on time--never, never!--for our freedom drills. Let's disobey together . . . No! not together; one, two, three! the first will disobey on the count of one, the second on two, the third on three. That makes all the difference. Let's each march out of step with the other two, however exhausting it may be to keep it up. Let's disobey individually...

The translations here by Connolly and Taylor are good. But the formatting of the Kindle edition is HORRIBLE. It appears that no human bothered to read it to look for errors from the optical character recognition. As an example "PA UBU" becomes at various times "P A UBU", "P AUBU", "PA U B U", etc. The funniest mistake was when they said that the set designs for Ubu Enchained were created by "Mad Ernst"! Ha! Did the play drive poor Herr Ernst mad?

Four stars here is purely for Ubu Enchained. The others are mainly of historical interest.