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With David Greig’s new version about to open, UBU ROI has become the most frequently revived play of the last year. Steve Cramer argues that it’s all about complicity.
o the prime minister stood up and lied
about the imminent threat of annihilation
that Iraq represented to the British people. It was a pretty tokenistic deception anyway. We didn't buy the war. but so what. he sent the troops regardless. When he was found out. did he resign. or even deign to make some form of apology? He couldn‘t be bothered. But then neither could a lot of its. so perhaps we're as responsible for this mess as he is.
It was so very different in the o()s. when John Profumo resigned for lying. even though he didn‘t know he was lying at the time. And in the 7()s. when 'I‘ed Short resigned over the gift of a teapot he didn't realise he owned. And in the 80s. when ('ecil Parkinson. once caught
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deceiving us about his private harem. decided immediately to spend more time with his. er. families. Over the last decade or so. though. we‘ve come to a point when deception of the public is a kind of lip service to be paid to
tradition. and it doesn‘t matter a pinch of poo if
our leaders are found out. It's like the upholding of some ancient form of good manners that no one much cares about any more: we just do it to avoid frightening old people.
And so the endless cant about ‘freedom'. ‘democracy’ and. for that matter. the 'hard working families' so beloved of our hubristic rulers is trotted out while we half listen and distract ourselves with TV shows about buying objects. internet porn and picture books by childisth rude chefs. In an era where ideology works hard to detach being from meaning and cause from effect. the middle class and middle aged buy in. We know perfectly well that the cheap clothes we wear. the fuels we consume and the offensively excessive profits we live by are paid for in other people's blood. .\'o one much bothers to dress it tip in principles any more. All the same. we don't like being confronted with our own complicity.
And this is precisely what Alfred Jarry set out to do at the end of the l9th century. a period very similar to our own. No one much believed in
Christianity any more. but the series of liuropean colonial wars against near defenceless third world powers previously justified by religion continued. The grand narratives and old certainties had crumbled. but there were always the fleshy sensualities of Paris to distract people.
Against this background. the eccentrically dressed Jarry (he often wore elaborate bicycle riders‘ costumes. slippers. a false phallus and two loaded revolvers to public engagements) decided to confront the public with a rude and childish theatrical cartoon. whose first word. ‘Merdref‘ (deliberately spelt that way) caused the performance to be disrupted for IS minutes while the majority of the audience booed. heckled and threatened violence at the offence. After a two day run in December ISUo. the play was pulled. but .larry had made his point with the
‘GEORGE W BUSH HAS THE CRASS ST UPIDITY YOU ASSOCIATE WITH UBU, BUT I DON'T THINK THE CHRISTIAN THING IS VERY UBU'