'Ubu Sings Ubu' can't get any weirder

In some situations, it is best to have no expectations. In others, the situation requires one to abandon any and all expectations completely. Both of these statements were true for the “Ubu Sings Ubu” (2016) performance at Club Oberon on Thursday night.

"Ubu Sings Ubu" is an adaptation of Alfred Jarry's 110-year-old French play "Ubu Roi". The show is punctuated with songs that have been translated into English with Google Translate, performed by the punk band Pere Ubu. “Ubu Sings Ubu” pushes a lot of boundaries, but none more than its audience’s personal space. If scatological outbursts or receiving a red-painted buttock to the face does not sound like your cup of theatrical tea, this may not be the play for you. This reviewer was content to watch from the sidelines as performers accosted other members of the audience while they sipped their drinks from the bar in the back of the theater.

Playing for just two nights at Club Oberon, “Ubu Sings Ubu” is indicative of the more experiential offerings at this outpost of the American Repertory Theater, such as “Acoustica Electronica” and “The Donkey Show,” both of which play relatively regularly. The show begins even before the audience is fully aware of it, as Pa Ubu, played by Tony Torn, and Ma Ubu, played by performance artist Julie Atlas Muz, make a circuit around the audience. Pa Ubu thanks individual members of the audience for letting him kill them during the performance, while Ma Ubu checks out the jewelry in the crowd. To be clear, no audience members are harmed during the performance, just their sense of personal space. Pa Ubu then kills time playing “Grand Theft Auto” onstage while three devilishly garbed dancers, who have been onstage this whole time, continue swaying to the atmospheric, bass-heavy music in the background. The show will never again appear as normal as it does at this point.

Some of the hallmarks of this scatological, hypersexualized farce, such as Pa Ubu’s tagline “By my green candle” and exclamations of “shit” all over the place, survived Google’s translation. However, the hilarious incongruities of the software’s translation should have veterans as confused as first-timers at moments – which happen very often.

There are clear parallels between Jarry’s work and Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and “Hamlet,” from both of which the former playwright wrings all semblance of decorum. Ma Ubu is Lady Macbeth with even less shame and more backhanded self interest. Her relationship with her husband is manipulative, sweet and grotesque almost simultaneously. Pa Ubu is a harder nut to crack, in some ways. He is utterly afraid of his own death, yet he freely brings death down upon everyone around him, whether or not it is in his interest to do so. His designs are not entirely his own— he is not an ambitious man and he gives in to the will of others without effort. In other words, everything must be illuminated for him; the grass is greener on the other side only when someone tells him it is.

When it comes to this rendition of the Ubu story, audiences should be ready to see a lot of derriere on stage and a lot of surprises. At one point, a sausage serves as a stand-in for a dildo; at another, one of the dancers strips down to just a jockstrap (and gallivants through the audience); at yet another, when it seems like the spectacle could not get more outlandish, Ma Ubu takes out a strap on. Based on the muttered responses and muted giggles in the audience, it seems like nobody had expected the show to go in any one of these directions— how could they? In any case, “Ubu Sings Ubu” makes for quite an experience.