Monday, August 25, 2008

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

East Bay Express review

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A Fuggen Good Run
A vote for Ubu may save your weekend.

By Sam Hurwitt

Alfred Jarry's absurd and offensive Ubu Roi set off riots when the play premiered in 1896, so naturally it was later latched onto by the dada and surrealist movements and has been revived frequently ever since. A scatological send-up of Macbeth in which a stupid, vicious and cowardly glutton rises to power through duplicitous schemes, it also naturally resonates in present-day America. Now playing for free weekend afternoons in John Hinkel Park in Berkeley, Shotgun Players' Ubu for President doesn't go for the obvious Bush-bashing, however — it just shows a worst-case scenario when any idiot can become president.

Shaped somewhat by actors' improvisations in rehearsal, Josh Costello's adaptation scraps most of the Macbeth parody in Ubu's sudden rise to power, replacing it with a lot of new campaign antics including a hysterical five-way debate. Rather than simply plotting to kill the king, the people push for democracy and King Wenceslas magnanimously decides to run for president and abdicate when he wins.

Democratic rabble-rouser Ming Jamal Joaquin Wounded Knee Goldstein is his only halfway serious competition until Ma Ubu goads Pa Ubu into getting off his ass to run for president. Soon daddy's demands of campaign-trail propriety spur the petulant Princess Buggerless to launch her own competing "princess power" campaign — which is all the funnier because the play premiered shortly after McCain's commercial equating Obama with Paris Hilton inspired Hilton to release her own parody campaign video.

Casi Maggio is a comic highlight as the bubbly teen princess, this Ubu's version of Prince Bougrelas, the avenging son of the slain king in Jarry's original play, and she's priceless as a ridiculously unlikely rebel leader. Sung Min Park is hilariously spaced out and touchy-feely as new character Ming, from his beginning as an earnest student activist to his increasingly way-out speeches as some kind of new age prophet. In fact, overall the show is funniest and most effective when it's least faithful to the original.

Whatever echoes of Macbeth are lost are made up for by Shakespeare quotes flying every which way. There are a lot of new scatological gags that are very true to the tone of the original, including changing Captain Bordure to MacNure so that he can be called "Manure" all the time. The setting is changed from Poland to the mythical land of Fugall and is full of empty campaign promises to the "Fuggen" people. There's a bit of audience participation, with the crowd invited to vote during intermission and someone drafted to play a lackey's role in the second act.

There's still a lot of Ubu Roi left in this version, and once Ubu comes to power things go to pot pretty much the way they do in the original play. Another thing retained is the deliberately misspelled but frequently exclaimed "merdre" of the original, sometimes translated as "shittr," is here a more euphonious "pshit!" While the garbled cussing was all very shocking in its day, now it and the groin-clutching oath "by my green candle" come off as perplexingly leaden shticks (or "pshticks") in an otherwise riotous show.

Part of the problem may be the delivery: both are exclaimed with gusto by Dave Garrett as Ubu but land with a thud. Garrett's Ubu is an appealingly hapless and lubberly lout, but for all Ubu's appalling greed and brutality, he's almost a straight man in this production. Not only is he buffeted around by forces he's too dim-witted to understand, which was always the case, but now he has to contend with personalities more outrageous than his.

So it's not his fault, and certainly not for lack of trying, that the old pshit just isn't quite as funny as the new, which is much better news than if the reverse were true. What they've done to the play is great — if anything, they should do more of it.

Carla Pantoja plays Ma Ubu as a Miami matron in a high pink Marge Simpson bouffant, and Gary Grossman is an amusingly unctuous King Wenceslas, who can't hide his pompousness behind his newfound populism. Megan Guzman as the queen is a cartoonish lush, but no less funny for her broadness. Ryan O'Donnell makes a sympathetic straight man as Captain MacNure, even when upstaged by his cock-and-balls sword hilt.

Valera Coble's costumes are appropriately garish and clownlike, nicely complemented by Jacquelyn Scott's simple set of bright circus stripes on fabric like the exterior of a big top. A lot of amusing songs are scattered throughout the play, all of them to the tune of well-known ditties like "Good King Wenceslas," "Oh! Susanna," and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" with clever lyrics by Garrett and Costello.

Patrick Dooley's madcap staging is long on slapstick and silliness, with almost necessarily mixed results. When you throw that much stuff against the wall, only some of it's going to stick. The insistent energy of the show is infectious, and it's hard not to get swept up in it. Why fight it? If you don't vote for Ubu, he's just going to cheat and win anyway.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Full Chronicle Review

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Ubu for President: By Josh Costello, adapted from Alfred Jarry. Directed by Patrick Dooley. With Dave Garrett, Carla Pantoja, Casi Maggio, Sung Min Park, Ryan O'Donnell et al. (Through Sept. 14. Shotgun Players, John Hinkel Park, Berkeley. One hour, 50 minutes. Free. Call (510) 841-6500 or go to www.shotgunplayers.org.)

One candidate is the incumbent, riding roughshod over civil liberties, while another, the title character, is a former warrior vying to out-cheat and out-bully his current boss. Their principal opponent in "Ubu for President" is a community activist rallying the forces of "change," with a universal-love platform and the pan-ethnic name Ming Jamal Joaquin Wounded Knee Goldstein.

Josh Costello, who adapted the script from Alfred Jarry's proto-absurdist "Ubu Roi," and Shotgun Players Artistic Director Patrick Dooley say they've tried to avoid making the 112-year-old "Ubu" a satire on the election in progress. Current events won't cooperate. True, the real-life incumbent Ubu isn't running again, and Dave Garrett's clueless Pa Ubu and Sung Min Park's hilariously New Age-spacey Ming bear little relation to actual candidates named John McCain or Barack Obama. But Costello has inserted some telling parallels, including a comic perennial protest candidate.

Then again, neither he nor Dooley could've predicted that the opening of Shotgun's annual free show in John Hinkel Park would coincide with Paris Hilton's entrance into the race. The party-hearty Princess Power campaign of the self-entitled Princess Buggerless (Casi Maggio) and her killer, pom-pom-wielding posse is a highlight of a ragtag and enjoyable show.

Turning "Ubu" into topical satire is a bit of a stretch. Originally a schoolboy sketch by Jarry and friends, the old cult favorite is more of an adolescent lampoon of authority (especially teachers). Much of that material remains, some of it more frighteningly relevant than ever.

Most of the comically effective electoral material is Costello's addition to Jarry's monarchy-putsch farce. Ubu goes up against the other, mostly new candidates in an attempt to unseat the reigning King Wenceslas (a smooth Gary Grossman, with a delightful Megan Guzman as his martini-fueled queen). Otherwise, most of the carnage and potty-mouth humor is pure Jarry.

In Dooley's staging, it's an engaging romp filled with slapstick, Valera Coble's outrageous costumes, shards of Shakespeare and music director Dave Malloy's raggedly set, comically reworded (by Costello and Garrett) songs, ranging from "Good King Wenceslas" (of course), "Clementine" and "Shenandoah" to "Anchors Aweigh," "America" and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The cast comes through with engagingly overstated caricatures (including Carla Pantoja's Ma Ubu) offset by the low-key drollery of Ryan O'Donnell's phallus-armed MacNure (pronounced "manure") and Alf Pollard, who designed the circus-striped set.

It also might have some unintended consequences. Maggio's performance could provide a real boost for the Hilton campaign.

-Robert Hurwitt

Chronicle blurb

The full review will be out later, but the blurb from Hurwitt is up:

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Playwright Josh Costello and director Patrick Dooley update Alfred Jarry’s proto-absurdist “Ubu Roi,” turn the royalist putsch into an election, add comically rewritten songs and a few hilariously pertinent new candidates and come up with an outrageous, generally delightful and very funny 1 ¾-hour farce. If Shotgun Players’ annual free outdoor show has no other effect on the current campaign, it might provide a real boost for Paris Hilton’s shot at the White House.
--R. Hurwitt

Cool As Hell Theatre Podcast

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The Cool As Hell Theatre Podcast episode, featuring director Patrick Dooley.

"The play, UBU FOR PRESIDENT, is loosely based on the play UBU ROI, by Alfred Jarry. And when I say loosely based, I am talking loose like a Hilton Heiress."

Sunday, August 10, 2008

cast & crew

cast

Marlon Deleon Ensemble
Dave Garrett Pa Ubu
Gary Grossman King / Ensemble
Megan Guzman Queen / Ensemble
Raechel Lockhart Ensemble
Casi Maggio Princess Buggerless
Sung Min Park Ming X
Ryan O'Donnell MacNure
Carla Pantoja Ma Ubu
Alf Pollard Laski / Ensemble
Jordan Winer Vitebsk / Ensemble

production team

Fontana Butterfield Assistant Director
Valera Coble Costume Design
Patrick Dooley Director
Daniel Gutierrez Technical Director
Liz Lisle Managing Director
Dave Malloy Musical Director
Alf Pollard Set Design
Jacquelyn Scott Props Design
Hannah Zahner-Isenberg Stage Manager

Friday, August 8, 2008

A&E Interactive on Paris Hilton vs Ubu for President

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by Karen D'Souza

Paris Hilton for President? Puh-lease! Cast your ballot for Shotgun Players instead. Berkeley’s scrappiest theater company is out to rock the vote and tickle the funny bone with “Ubu for President.” Cheekily adapted from Alfred Jarry’s 1896 absurdist masterpiece “Ubu Roi,” this over-the-topical satire shines a light on the dark side of electoral process. Baby-kissing politicians, killer cheerleaders, shameless audience interaction and a generous dose of potty humor add to this beyond-zany campaign. ”Ubu” runs through Sept. 14 at John Hinkel Park, Arlington Avenue at Southampton Avenue, Berkeley. Oh, and did I mention this summer theater treat is totally FREE? Now that’s HOT.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Cast Photo

Berkeley Daily Planet review

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Arts & Entertainment:
Shotgun Stages ‘Ubu for President’
By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet
Thursday August 07, 2008

Cries of “Hornstrumpot!” and “By my green candle!” mingle strangely with the savage shrieks of warring pom-pom girls and feel-good admonitions to “send your energy” in the Shotgun Players’ Ubu for President. The play is Shotgun’s offering for their annual free outdoor theater extraganza at John Hinkel Park, and it coincides nicely with election season as the group confabulates the specter of Alfred Jarry’s seminal avant-garde play, Ubu Roi, with a bunch of ghost images from the media.

Following the basic plotline of Jarry’s unique blend of human puppet show, Shakespeare parody and Symbolist sublimation, Josh Costello (who has directed for the Magic in San Francisco, as well as the Crucible in Oakland, and was Impact’s first artistic director in Berkeley) has written a broad burlesque of contemporary popular culture.

Directed by Shotgun founder Patrick Dooley, the episodes from the original Ubu cut with skit-like inserts play like sketch comedy. The songs (lyrics by Dave Garrett, musical direction by Dave Malloy, just off Beowulf and late of Clown Bible) are from any grade school collection of patriotic anthems and American folksongs. The lyrics are warped to convey the silliness of the singers, cartoonish characters who have taken over the animation studio.

From the entrance of Ma and Pa Ubu (Carla Pantoja with a yard-tall hot pink beehive hairdo and kit-kat dark glasses, Dave Garrett with Ubu’s signature stomach-level spiral and a French revolutionary red cap) as spectators, sitting down in lawnchairs, the Ubus are portrayed as trailer trash churls, versus the rather bourgeois King (Gary Grossman), who steps down to run against Ubu for president, and his monstrously suburbanite Princess (prince in the original) of a daughter (Casi Maggio), who takes up the royalist opposition after Ubu steps on the King’s foot and assassinates him (the original burlesqued Macbeth).

There’s also a cloyingly feel-good candidate, Ming Jamal Wounded Knee (or Eagle) Goldstein (Sung Min Park), who canvasses the audience before the show begins. There’s a Debraining Machine, but no voting machines. By the concluding song, the action and characters have stretched every which way over the landscape like Silly Putty.

The show’s not supposed to be more than inspired by Jarry, but it’s a good moment to say something about the man who influenced both Picasso and Miro, whom Antonin Artaud named his own theater company after, and whose creations captivated pop artists like Frank Zappa and of course avant-rock band Pere Ubu.

Out of a schoolboy puppet show that slagged a pompous teacher, Jarry realized a sublimely rapacious character, whose absurd self-absorption and obliviousness attains metaphysical heights.

From the opening expletive, “Merde!” to the wholesale slaughter of nobility and peasant alike by the Debraining Machine, the play devours itself as gluttonous Ubu shamelessly aggrandizes himself. W. B. Yeats, who was present at the opening night riot (a century-long tradition at Parisian avant-garde events), called it a harbinger of “the Savage God.”

Jarry was a Breton, in the line of other dramatists of Celtic extraction (preceded by Victor Hugo and Villiers De L’Isle-Adam with his proto-Ubu, Tribulat Bonhomet; followed by John Synge, Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw and Ramon Del Valle-Inclan from Galicia), all of whom drew what would later be called characters of alienation (or defamiliarization) from a time-honored Celtic routine of pompous self-parody and obliviousness, king and jester at once.

Through this deadpan, everyone becomes implicated. “A Celt can never laugh at himself,” said Oliver St. John Gogarty (whom Joyce dragooned as “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan” to introduce Ulysses). Or never laugh at himself alone, a self-caricature in a world of grotesques.

Dave Garrett and Carla Pantoja seem to be up to the meta-Freudian ferocities of the Ubu ménage, but they portray them as genial louts with attitude. Post-

cracker barrel populism replaces a bloated cultural parody, the Romantics’ overwrought version of Shakespeare as an assault vehicle. The rest isn’t silence, more like MAD TV.

Jarry turned theater inside out with a humorous reign of terror and banality, cut with delirious flights of imagination: “Clichés are the armature of the Absolute.”

Andre Gide recorded how he took on Ubu as his public persona in The Coutnerfeiters and his journals. The Mime Troupe, under R. G. Davis, made political hay of Ubu in the ’60s; now, the Shotgun Players, in the spirit of fun, make a joyful noise instead.



UBU FOR PRESIDENT

4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Sept. 14 at John Hinkle Park, Southampton Avenue, off The Arlington.

Free (donations accepted).

841-6500. www.shotgunplayers.org.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Chad Jones review in SF Examiner

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Foul politicians tangle, comedy ensues
POSTED August 3, 11:02 AM

Aw, pschit!

Any discussion of an “Ubu” play has to begin thus. When Alfred Jarry’s “Ubu Roi” opened in 1896, the first word of the play was, “Merdre!” (loosely translated into, “S***tr!”). And the play has been notorious ever since.

Shotgun Players, never a troupe to shy away from notoriety, takes on “Ubu” as its free theater in the park production this summer. Writer Josh Costello has riffed on Jarry’s “Ubu” plays (there were three) to come up with “Ubu for President,” which had its premiere on a sunny, warm Saturday afternoon in Berkeley’s beautiful John Hinkel Park.

The political comedy – more comedy than politics, thankfully – is essentially about stupid people and even stupider politics. In other words, it’s incredibly timely.

Jarry set his tale in Poland, or, as he wrote, “which is to say, nowhere.” Costello takes the Jarry-rigged wit further by setting it in a place called Fugalle (forgive the spelling if incorrect), which means anything pertaining to that country can be described as “Fuggin” as in the “Fuggin people” or the “Fuggin president.” And you know what? Gets a laugh every time.

The idea is that King Wenceslas and his family have been on the throne for too many generations and it’s time for the people to adopt democracy and choose their own president.

So the King (Gary Grossman) decides to run. So does Pa Ubu (Dave Garrett), a retired captain of the dragoons whose favorite expression is, “By my green candle” (often followed by a grabbing of his naughty bits). The other candidates are the king’s daughter, Princess Buggerless (Casi Maggio), a trippy hippie named Ming Jamal Joaquin Wounded Knee Goldstein (Sung Min Park) and an ancient man named Lesczynski (Alf Pollard).

Ubu’s ambition is ignited by his aggressive wife, Ma Ubu (Carla Pantoja), with her extra-wide hips and her extra-tall pink beehive, and his candidacy is aided by one of the king’s former henchmen, Captain MacNure (Ryan O’Donnell), whose name, as you might imagine, is often shortened.

The Ubus are delightfully vile, constantly swearing – “Pschittabugger and buggerapschitt!” "By God’s third nipple!” “Rumples***skin!” – and fighting. “I’m going to rip open your gut basket!” Ubu shouts at his wife. On the campaign trail, Ubu not only kisses a baby, he makes out with it before tossing the babe on its wee head, and there’s a generous supply of farting and belching to be sure.

Director Patrick Dooley only barely contains the manic energy of his cast (which also includes Marlon Deleon, Mega Guzman, Raechel Lockhart and Jordan Winer), which is as it should be. Oh, and there’s music. This is a musical…of sorts. Old tunes such as “Good King Wenceslas,” “Oh, Susannah,” and “Shenandoah” are outfitted with new lyrics (by Costello and Garrett) and given spirited accompaniment by cast members on various horns and guitars (musical direction by Dave Malloy).

My favorite lyrics came in a version of “My Darling Clementine” as various forces are gathering for war. The soldiers sign “We’re the phallus for the palace” and the Princess sings, “Kill the dipstick with the lipstick.”

One of the funniest bits of shtick comes when O’Donnell and Park’s characters are chained in the dungeon and discover the only way to survive is to capture and kill rats, but the only way to do that – and then feed each other – is with their feet, which they proceed to do.

Costello’s snappy invalidScriptTag is peppered with crudity and Shakespeare. Happily he retains Jarry’s “debraining machine,” which seems awfully au courante and makes one wonder just how many debraining machines remain in operation at the moment. Probably too many to count.

The players all seem to be having a grand time. Garrett and Pantoja lustily fill the Ubus’ pschit-stained shoes, and Maggio’s pink-loving, ultra-princessy princess is a standout. O’Donnell’s faithful sidekick is always worth watching just for the play of emotions on his face, and Park’s peace-loving, sex-loving, plant-loving hippie is so sincere he’s almost scary.

At two hours, the show is exactly long enough. And with a cast this good and a play this funny, you may just bust your gut basket.

review in San Jose Mercury News (and CC Times, etc)

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Review: 'Ubu' is fun political satire
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
Article Launched: 08/03/2008 10:09:53 AM PDT

Berkeley's Shotgun Players have developed a new hybrid theatrical art form — Commedia dell'Silly with the debut of "Ubu for President," which is able to poke merciless fun at the political process without drawing serious blood from any of the current political candidates.

You must supply the Magic Marker to draw your own political conclusions as you watch this wildly funny piece based on characters created by late 19th century author Alfred Jarry. Jarry based his Pa Ubu (Dave Garrett) character on a high school teacher he loathed.

Pa is loosely based on Macbeth, but with none of the Scottish gent's redeeming characteristics. And, naturally, his wife, Ma Ubu (Carla Pandora), is modeled after the over-achieving Lady Macbeth, only without her subtlety.

These two, and a host of other equally bizarre characters drawn by playwright/adapter Josh Costello, gallop through the transition of a country from a monarchy to a democracy through an election.

The process begins when the citizens (the audience) petitions the King (Gary Grossman) to turn the country from a monarchy to a democracy. The prancing divine-right dude agrees, much to the dismay of his lush wife the Queen (Megan Guzman) who wears her crown at a boozy angle and carries a martini glass much like a scepter.

But the king goes ahead, quickly becoming the presidential candidate. He is quickly joined by Ubu, a belching incompetent; Ming (Sung Min Park), who has a bunch of last names representing every possible ethnic group, and hates no living or possibly living, thing; the king's daughter Princess Buggerless (Casi Maggio), who is running on a pink powered platform of "Princess Power;" and Laski (Alf Pollard) an old guy in a cardigan.

The whole thing turns into a silly chase in the outdoor theater, with much high and low comedy, silly gags, outrageous word play, only-slightly-masked profanity, an election, and a sort of comedic free-for-all that somehow manages to make some nicely pointed commentary on the current scene.

It's all good stuff, but the premise is a bit to thin to carry the play out to two hours. The piece needs some serious trimming to be even funnier.

Friday, August 1, 2008

East Bay Express preview article

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CRITIC'S CHOICE
Ubu for President
An absurd and scatological send-up of Macbeth and everything society holds dear, Alfred Jarry's gleefully offensive 1896 play UbuRoi (which gave rock band PereUbu its name) tells the story of a stupid, boorish, greedy, craven, and bloodthirsty person utterly without redeeming qualities who becomes ruler of the land through devious means. Hard as it is to imagine that anyone could find modern resonances in something like that (ahem), Impact Theatre Company founder Josh Costello -- now a director at Marin Theatre Company -- has adapted the play to the 2008 presidential election as Ubu for President, a Shotgun Players production helmed by artistic director Patrick Dooley. August 2 through September 14 at JohnHinkelPark (2 Southampton Ave., Berkeley).ShotgunPlayers.org or 510-841-6500.

-- By Sam Hurwitt

Contra Costa Times preview article




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Craig: ''Ubu for President' updates an absurdist classic
By Pat Craig
Contra Costa Times
Article Launched: 08/01/2008 12:01:22 AM PDT

It could, though — it can always get worse. Alfred Jarry knew that when he wrote "Ubu for President" in 1896, the year William McKinley beat William Jennings Bryan in the presidential race, Utah became the 45th state, Queen Victoria became the longest reigning British monarch and George Burns was born.

Jarry wrote the play about "Ubu Roi," a fictional tyrant who derives great pleasure from trampling his enemies, and is described in the work as a character "so twisted, so perverse, so utterly self-interested and greedy and petty that it's difficult to write him off."

Josh Costello adapted the Ubu tale for contemporary audiences, and will premiere it Saturday in Berkeley's John Hinkel Park as the Shotgun Players' free summer outdoor production. Just to give the show a modern feel, the characters have been thrust into a modern setting with all of their skullduggery intact.

What Costello is also striving to keep intact is the knack Jarry showed at making the worst parts of human nature laughable — a great tool in helping overcome evil.

Shotgun's artistic director Patrick Dooley directs the show that features music arranged by Dave Malloy and lyrics by Dave Garrett.