Since Ubu roi was entering the Comédie Française repertoire, just like a work by Molière or Racine, it seemed necessary to me to indicate to the program reader what had preceded this event. Not by enumerating the various creations, but by emphasizing the strangeness that spectators had been able to perceive about it since 1896. I especially recounted my own memories, from the first performance I had attended in 1958 at the TNP (Théâtre National Populaire) of Jean Vilar. Article from Les Nouveaux Cahiers de la Comédie-Française:

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Some Enigmas of Ubu Roi's Scenic Destiny

It is deliberately that I take up here, regarding Ubu roi, the title of an article devoted to Lorenzaccio in the present Nouveaux Cahiers by Frédérique Plan, so much do the two plays, created a week apart, seem to me to have had the same scenic destiny. Reputed unplayable, they have rarely been staged in their complete version. "Restored in its integrity as it was performed by the puppets of the Phynances theater in 1888": this mention on the title page of Ubu roi ou Les Polonais immediately indicates the juvenile and collective origin of a work elaborated by the Rennes high school students, of which Jarry wanted to be the faithful transcriber and adapter, passing from children's theater to adult stage. Fitting into the form of Shakespearean tragedy while parodying it, the play shows, schematically, how Ubu, commander with a once glorious past, pushed by an ambitious woman, eliminates the King of Poland Venceslas and seizes his throne. He conspires with Captain Bordure, whom he disowns once his crime is accomplished. The entire royal family is massacred. Only the king's son, young Bougrelas, escapes, who will finally avenge his ancestors. Ubu governs with the sole ambition of eating andouille and enriching himself: "I will kill everyone, then I will leave". He exterminates the nobles, magistrates, financiers who resisted him. The Tsar of Russia declares war on him. He leaves for campaign and entrusts the regency to Mother Ubu. The latter, chased by the revolted people, takes refuge in a cave where, by a strange coincidence, she finds Ubu defeated. The reconciled spouses embark on the Baltic and sail toward new adventures. Ubu regrets his country: "If there were no Poland, there would be no Poles" he says to finish, alluding to the primitive title of the play, but also to the fact that the country had been erased from the map since the Congress of Vienna. Ubu roi was therefore created by Aurélien Lugné-Poe at the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, more precisely at the Nouveau Théâtre hall (today Théâtre de Paris), on December 10, 1896, with Firmin Gémier in the main role. The dress rehearsal having taken place the day before, as is proper, there were never more than two performances for what was going to be considered a historic battle. Jarry himself explains, in the program brochure, that the show had to achieve abstraction, on all levels (visual and sound decor, actor's play, representation of time and space). As for Father Ubu, he is a synthesis, both of the three elements composing the individual (physics, phynance and merdre) and of all humanity. On the evening of the dress rehearsal, almost inaudible, Jarry, before the curtain, warns against those who have invested Father Ubu with too many satirical symbols. But above all, he notes everything he had to consent to for the performance to take place, despite all obstacles: Gémier available only two evenings, actors not knowing their text, asking for cuts (which he had to accept) despite common sense. This is to say how much Lugné-Poe's staging was far from being faithful to the text and even to the spirit of the work! Only the decor (painted by Sérusier and Bonnard, assisted by Vuillard, Ranson and Toulouse-Lautrec) satisfies him in that it condenses opposed spaces, and suggests abstraction well. As for the orchestra, it is reduced to timpani and two pianos. The revival by Firmin Gémier as director and principal performer at the Théâtre Antoine, in 1908, was no more respectful of the work, since it was announced as a "Play in two acts and 10 tableaux" and made the Free Men appear, who are from Ubu enchained. And Lugné-Poe himself, reviving his initial creation in 1922, did not attach himself more to the complete text, so much so that it fell into oblivion for a certain number of years, letting the idea establish itself that it was unplayable. The Ubu staged by Jean Vilar in 1958 then for a few exceptional performances in 1960 was a popular success, a true consecration. There emerged an extraordinary convergence between the "stage manager", as Vilar liked to call himself, and Alfred Jarry's conceptions, notably on the level of synthesis and abstraction. He considered as a challenge the succession of various tableaux, in distant places: "It is a work where the peripeteias are of great variety, where the character confronts the most diverse classes, and where the discontinuity of action is much more 'feverish' than in an epic work" he said, and the breaks in tone were not to frighten him. Is it only for a duration reason that he felt the need to proceed to a montage of Ubu roi and Ubu enchaîné interlarded with scenes from Ubu sur la Butte or to give greater scope to this work? The fact is that he signed a service note enjoining the troupe to well mention its title, Ubu "version for the stage", and not Ubu roi. Certainly, the attacks of the Collège de Pataphysique, in the name of respect for the work, seem secondary in view of the consecration he offered it. Curious fact, Vilar, like Lugné-Poe, secretly dreamed of interpreting the role of Father Ubu himself. Like his predecessor, he had to entrust it to another, Georges Wilson, who wanting to be "serious as an English clown" had known how to give a personal interpretation of the character. Remain, unforgettable, his movements in small round steps, his voice cutting like a cleaver, his cowardice, keenly appreciated by the public and critics. So much so that, for years, Wilson was Ubu, like Gérard Philippe was the Cid. Is it an intervention of the stage gods or a simple coincidence? this creation anticipated by two months De Gaulle's arrival to power! Many years later, another creation marked the Parisian stage. It was in 1977 that of Peter Brook at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, under the significant title Ubu aux Bouffes. And there again the director realized a montage from Ubu roi and Ubu enchaîné. One could believe that he wanted to highlight the principle of identity of contraries and especially play on the notion of "counterpart" that Jarry affected to Ubu enchaîné, all the more so as a white actor confronted a black actress. It was nothing of the sort. So, why weld the two antithetical plays if it wasn't with the aim of making Jarry's theses better understood? Despite the stripping of the stage and a remarkable play of the actors, one doesn't understand why this textual manipulation. To believe that the practitioner feels a frustration at the mere reading of Ubu roi, which he claims to fill with the second play, which, obviously, only postpones the problem. On the other hand, if there is a montage from Ubu roi, Ubu sur la butte and Ubu enchaîné that was justified, it is well the one realized, in 1990, by Guilhem Pellegrin in Avignon. The adaptation for two actors, some fruits and many vegetables was so intelligent, dynamic and pleasant that it still tours. One couldn't say by what alchemy the vegetables seemed to take their revenge on the humans and give a unique meaning to the whole. Nevertheless, the question persists, nagging: wouldn't the demonstration be just as convincing with Ubu roi alone? In my spectator memory, I note only one staging faithful to the text and, one cannot more, to the potachic spirit of the work. It was, in 1970, that of Guénolé Azerthiope at the head of the Phénoménal Théâtre at the Théâtre de Plaisance. No curtain, but a boxing ring. The actors fell from a tunnel, as evacuated by Pantagruel himself. Interpellated and even taken to task, the spectator was well in the high school courtyard, at the very bottom, in the places, if I may say so. Strangely, the critics acted as if they had seen nothing. However, one couldn't conclude this survey of enigmas without mentioning the unique interpretation following the text of Ubu roi to the letter, punctuation included: that which Jean-Christophe Averty gave on television in 1965, with Claude Terrasse's music, Jean Bouise in the role of Father Ubu, Rosy Varte in that of Mother Ubu. Everything there is of a fidelity, an absolute respect toward the work and its author. But can one still speak of theater in the face of this debauchery of special effects? Different medium, not to say opposed to theater, the televised show requires a different attitude on the part of the viewer. I will conclude with Frédérique Plain's own terms: if Ubu roi has been rarely played in its entirety, and if its central character, become mythical, has long been reduced to the state of a puppet, it is because the play disturbed and still disturbs, by its extreme formal freedom, the scope of its themes and the communicative violence of its language. If, outside the great stagings of the theatrical institution, many companies choose to work on this text, in all directions and in all forms, it is because theater has simply not finished resolving this enigma that a 23-year-old young man posed to it, more than a century ago.

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