Teacher:
Vicente Forés
Course:
Filología Inglesa I
Raúl
Hernández Garrido, Gestas de Papá Ubú
“Un
espectáculo provocativo, imaginativo, transgresor, cómico, mordaz, cruel,
irónico y muy, muy creativo.”
Directed by Paco Maciá
Compañía
Ferroviaria de Artes Escénicas:
Manuel Hernández as “Papá Ubú”
Gema Segura as “Mamá Ubú”
Mario Esteban as “Memnón/ Monomonarca/ Mandamás/
Pueblo”
Emma
López as “Palotín/ Pueblo/ Soldado/ Alto cargo del partido/ Juez/
Nobles”
Cristian Weidmann as “Palotín/ Conciencia/
Pueblo”
Leticia Ñeco as “Bailarina Tatana/
Arqueopterix”
L’Altre
Espai, Jueves 24 de Noviembre de
2005
This play has a lot of
characters, but they are interpreted by only six actors. I am going to talk
about the most important of them: the principal character, this is Papá Ubú,
and he was resurrected by the excellent interpretation of Manuel
Hernández. Ubú
is a misterious man who is very known for everybody, because his coward
actions
and his incoherent language as we can see in his dialogues with
unpronounceable
words like “Mierdra”; all the stupidity of Ubú is combined with a great
wisdom,
I think, adquired from the expierence got in a long life; Ubú is always
moving
around the scenario with the assistance of her supposed wife Mamá Ubú.
Mamá Ubú
is a dominant woman that has been cheating and profiting her husband
Papá Ubú;
she seems to be very astute, like we see when she manipulates a lot of
people,
specially Ubú, to get her own profit, she is an icon of the stereotype of
human: they look for their own profit to try to survive, but they need
somebody
to get profit from.
When
you are seeing the play, you enter in a confusing and abstract world that
crashes with the absurd, a world with ghosts that appear to be human,
but they
live in another dimension. The characters are dressed with loud clothes
combining a great variety of styles: Papá Ubú’s clothes seem to be some
futurist and post-apocaliptic attire, and he is a bald man; from another
hand,
Mamá Ubú wears a classical vulgar dress, and the informal aspect of her
heavy
boots; there are many clothes too, that have an important meaning, like
the Marine
Capitain uniform who wears the Monomoarca or the sensual amazon attire
of the
attractive Bailarina Tatana while is dancing an exotic (and erotic)
dance.
However, there
are a lot of scenes that cause an important impact on the spectators, for
example, the first scene shows us the presentation of Ubú with a stage
which is
empty of decorations and with an annoying and addictive music (that I think
it’s going to be ringing in my head for the rest of my life); there are
other
important scenes I remember like the Monomonarca’s militar procession:
with the
lights iluminating Monomonarca and Papá and Mamá Ubú, and with the militar
music of Radetzki March; the dance of the Bailarina Tatana, one of my
favourite
scenes, where the sensual dance of Leticia Ñeco’s body hypnotising the
masculin
sector of the public and the figure of Ubú, this is a scene that shows the
weakness the great part of us have with our sensual instinct (specially the
men); and, at the end, the battle between Ubú and Memnón in a battle
ring, with
the most negative reaction from the masculine public, according to the tanga
wore by Memnón (like the moment in RIII in which Clarence was murdered by
Ratcliff in his bath).
For
me, this play is an abstract apologia of the changes of different human
societies
(like monarchies, dictatorships, republics, etc.) that criticises some
political and ideological aspects of the present society (like the critic to
George W. Bush is the scene of the flag of the USA, or the critic to
Franco’s
regime when it appears somebody imitating Franco, etc.), and the aspect
of the
speaking of Ubú, I think it may be related to the ideology of F.
Nietzsche of
the uselessness of language as an objective way of
comunication.
So: ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡Podemos irnos todos a la mierdra!!!!!!!