Every few years, San Francisco theatre-goers have an opportunity to see Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s comic masterpiece about a spoiled, temper tantrum-throwing tyrant. The play has been staged here by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Eureka Theatre, and Cutting Ball Theatre, among others. Those who know the play may be tempted to compare the comic ogre in the title role to our 47th President, as Donald Trump, too, is capable of all kinds of bad behavior while he rules his country. (Jarry’s Ubu ruled Poland, a country which didn’t exist in 1896 when Jarry wrote the play, as it had been taken over by other nations.)
The comparison of Ubu’s outrageous reign to Trump’s is not welcomed by actor Geoff Hoyle, who performed the role of the Ubu locally in Amlin Gray’s Eureka Theatre 1988 adaptation of Jarry. That version, titled Ubu Unchained, suggested Presidents Nixon and Reagan had Ubuesque qualities, and Ubu even parodied Nixon’s “Checkers Speech.”
Times have changed, however. In a recent conversation, Hoyle told me Trump has ruined the role of Ubu for other actors. The man convicted of 34 felonies and impeached twice has been more outrageous and less predictable than Jarry’s clownish King of Poland. For instance, what is Ubu’s Napoleonic declaration of war on Russia (a war he loses), compared to Trump’s recent threats to conquer Greenland and the Panama Canal. Only a genuine bully would choose small, almost defenseless countries or houseless, distressed immigrants when he vows to conquer “foreigners.” And thanks to his backers on the Supreme Court, Trump can also claim his presidency is immune from legal prosecution anywhere at any time. Such grandstanding puts him far ahead of earlier Ubus in terms of arrogant, self-serving behavior and escapes (which Ubu makes in Jarry’s play) from enemies.
Moreover, the Ubus who appeared on San Francisco stages and in Jarry’s Paris theatre were mostly comic, or meant to be. Outrages they committed evoked disbelief but also elicited laughter at his foolish behavior. Trump is Ubu without laughter, as he threatens to disrupt myriad lives through deportations, climate change acceleration, retraction of civil liberties, cuts in public service programs, threats to invade allied countries. The list of his offenses is likely become much longer during his new term as President. In any case, unlike Jarry’s Ubu, Trump is not fantasy or fantastical, he’s fact.
King Ubu’s cartoonish ascent to the throne in Poland, starting with an assassination of his predecessor, parodies Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Napoleon’s militarism as it unleashes on the stage an arrogant, self-centered, irrational crybaby named Ubu. He is pear-shaped, because in a French pun by Jarry, “Father” Ubu is “Pere” Ubu. In 1896, the Paris premiere of the play provoked an audience riot with its first word (“merdre,” a French variant of “shit”). Ubu’s bad behavior subsequently was praised as an avant-garde landmark in theatre history.
Unfortunately for the public and the theatre world, Trump has taken his Ubu act off-stage, beyond the campaign platform and the debating hall, and turned the rest of the world into his theater of cruelty.
Those of us who have indulged in theatrical arts, particularly stage satire, now have to watch Trump spoil a once perfectly enjoyable stage role. It’s no longer satire or comedy, as tens of millions of citizens vote for him and give his threats and bullying high approval ratings. Some Trumpists took a jail sentence for crimes committed on his behalf on January 6, 2021. Corporate executives and tech leaders celebrate the generous tax cuts he gave them, and expect more of the same (whereas Jarry’s Ubu heavily taxed his subjects). While Jarry’s Ubu ascends to the throne by helping assassinate his country’s leader, the new Ubu came into power after surviving an assassination attempt. He now hints that God is his bodyguard, and some Evangelicals agree.
The creator of Ubu Roi knew his character well. Alfred Jarry once agreed with the Paris critic Mendes that Ubu is composed “of eternal human imbecility, eternal lust, eternal gluttony, the vileness of instinct magnified into tyranny… [with] the ideals peculiar to those who have just eaten their fill.” I won’t say that the same could be said of our current President, because I don’t want give him eternal life. Nor would I advocate producing Jarry’s play with a Trump impersonator in the title role. We need a new play for the post-Ubu character who is always accompanied by a “nuclear football” (a box with nuclear war codes) and has quite a few billionaires paying him homage with cash.
Trump would never say (as Ubu does in Barbara Wright’s translation): “I’m getting rich! I’m going to have the list of my property read.” Instead he talks about selling the Trump brand. Nor would he hear magistrates tell him (as they tell Jarry’s Ubu when he wants to change the law) “We are opposed to all change.” Ubu executes the magistrates who oppose him. Trump already has six backers on the Supreme Court, and since he appointed three of them, laws have not been much of an impediment.
Let us hope that this new character will travel the same route Jarry once predicted for his play, “another lot of young people will appear, and consider us completely out of date, and they will write ballads to express their loathing of us, and there is no reason why this should end.”
Jarry quotations translated by Barbara Wright and taken from the New Directions edition of Ubu Roi. Joel Schechter is author of several books about satire.
