Preview: Kneehigh’s UBU!, Marble Factory

“A big joyous buttock squeeze of a show (…) riotous laughs, hearty singalongs and even party games,” said one review. If you’re thinking, ‘Kneehigh must be back in town’, you’re spot on.

The great Cornish masters of revelry, invention, storytelling, song and dance and all-round theatrical magic are back in town, and their latest production is a uniquely audience-involving take on a subversive and satirical classic of 20th-century theatre.

Kneehigh have taken Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s infamous, riot-provoking satire about a despotic dictator (“impossibly greedy, unstoppably crude, inexorably daft and hell-bent on making the country great again!” Sound familiar?), and turned it into a highly interactive promenade musical, a high-spirited hybrid of theatre, song and dance – and they bring it to the Marble Factory this month, in association with Bristol Old Vic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FomOI16BWqU

Featuring some of the most iconic anthems of our times, given a fresh run for their money by a belting Kneehigh band, plus an extraordinary choir of extras (the audience), we’re promised a rocking, rollicking riot of ridiculousness. Audiences will be free to wander, leave phones on, go to the bar and sing as loud as they can.

Well, the time must have seemed right to revisit this piece about a crazed dictator. How much were Kneehigh drawn towards Ubu by current events and personalities, and how much had it simply been on the Kneehigh back-burner for a while? “Ubu Roi is a play I have known and loved since my student days,” explains Carl Grose, the company’s co-artistic director and the show’s co-conceiver.

“Jarry’s play tells the story of Ubu, an ex-soldier who, with the help of his Lady Macbeth-ish wife, murders his way to the top. It is a brilliant satire on the abuse of power and greed, and I’d always had an idea for Kneehigh to do it. It seemed right to make our show more resonant to what’s happening in the world now. The world is absurd. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Our UBU! reflects that madness and the characters we watch on the daily news. It’s also a huge amount of fun!”

It all came about when Carl, Kneehigh founder member Mike Shepherd and Charles Hazlewood [the composer behind previous Kneehigh shows Dead Dog in a Suitcase and The Tin Drum) were talking about what to do next. “I wanted to do Ubu. Mike wanted to something more improv-led, and Charles had this great idea of creating a piece whereby the audience were part of the action and sang along with the show.

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“They were three very separate ideas. Then we thought about squashing them all together. And our version of Ubu started to take shape. We thought that the audience should stand, sing along, and play games. Once we’d opened it, we found the show had this amazing energy. Each night, a community is formed. And it is very spontaneous, alive and in the moment.”

The audience is, indeed, key to Kneehigh’s UBU!. “They are a character themselves,” Carl explains. “The show requires that they become a zoo, take part in war, cheer or boo Ubu (however they’re feeling). They are the people of Lovelyville – my invented community that Ubu crashes and takes over. And then of course there’s the singing. You’re not obliged to sing. But I’ll bet you a quid you will be within the space of three songs!”

Kneehigh’s UBU! A Singalong Satire, in association with Bristol Old Vic January 8-25, The Marble Factory. For more info, visit bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/ubu

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