REVIEW: Ubu the King

I’ve mentioned the Actors’ Gang in the past, a theater group based in Culver City. In addition to presenting edgy, experimental theater, they also do extensive work in the community, including youth workshops and a fun summer family-friendly free Shakespeare in the Park program. (We’ve attended every Shakespeare in the Park performance since its start, taking our kids when they were children. Though they seem to have outgrown it, my wife and I still attend every year!)

Founded in 1981, after operating primarily in various theaters in Hollywood over the years, in 2005 the Actors’ Gang moved to the Ivy Substation in downtown Culver City, a historic landmark that once stored power equipment for nearby electric railways and was converted to a theater. The venue anchors one end of the city's downtown and played a role in the re-gentrification of the neighborhood—it’s also a few blocks from the Culver Studios, which I’ve also highlighted in past posts.

One of the founders and primary movers of the Actors’ Gang is actor and director Tim Robbins, who is very active and hands on with the troupe. Robbins' years at UCLA briefly overlapped my own time there and, in fact, he mounted a production of “Ubu the King" when I was a student there. Alas, I did not see that production, so when I heard that they were staging it again to mark the Actors’ Gang’s 40th anniversary, I had to see it.

“Ubu the King” is about a Polish nobleman whose wife convinces him to murder the king and take the crown for himself. He promptly becomes a despot, proceeding to consolidate power and accumulate the kingdom's wealth by exploiting, terrorizing and even executing his subjects, including his noblemen and landowners; though he kills most of the king’s family, the assassinated son partners with allies in Russia to exact revenge. This is the basic plot, but it does not do justice to the absurdist and low brow comedy, and the use of devices like toy action figures and strobe lights that Robbins employs to highlight the anarchic and chaotic tone of the play. This is very much guerrilla theater—at one point, during the strobe light sequence, I realized that several in the company running around the theater were nude!

Written in 1896 by Alfred Jarry, the play is profane, scatological and absurdist, and considered a precursor to the modernist and absurdist theater movement—indeed, a riot reportedly ensued at the play’s first performance. It's a sort of absurdist version of "Macbeth" and other Shakespeare plays such as "Hamlet" and "King Lear." (The Actors’ Gang is also heavily influenced by the commedia dell'arte style of acting.)

I have another tenuous connection to the production—a close college friend of mine was in in Robbins’ original production at UCLA that I didn’t see.  Just a few years back, he told me that shortly after Robbins graduated (around 1981), he called my friend and asked him if he wanted to appear in a new production that summer. My friend told me that he passed on the invitation, partly because he already had a job lined up for that summer as a theater usher (in retrospect, of course, he wonders now what he was thinking!).

Fast forward to the show from last week. The theater is very small and seats only about 100 people. Robbins actually showed up before the start of the show, mingling and worked the bar a little.

Afterwards, in the theater’s tiny lobby/foyer, Robbins walked by me but seemed to be speaking to people he knew, so I didn’t feel comfortable trying to break in. After we exited the theater and looked back, however, my wife noticed that Robbins had come out on his own. My wife had wanted to rave to him about an Actors’ Gang show he produced in 1991 (when they were in a theater in Hollywood) called “Klub,” which she really loved. So we ran back and spent a few minutes speaking with him—he was lovely and effusive.

When I mentioned my friend’s story, he asked his name—I qualified by saying I wasn’t sure he’d remember him, but indeed he did. He told me to tell my friend to encourage him to attend and then say hi to him after the show. In fact, he told me that he had invited a bunch of people from that production he was still in touch with (who he referred to as “the original UBUists”) to the show and they had had a mini-reunion.

The following day, while going through the program, I noticed there was a list of “the original UBUists”—and found my friend’s name on the list!