King Turd Reviews
So I was extremely happy with how King Turd wrapped up. I had huge fun and, having been reminded of what it's like to participate in a play, I can't wait for my next chance. Let's see what some people thought..
"Reviewer Cameron Woodhead
There’s a certain visceral satisfaction in excreting a well-formed poo. Alfred Jarry probably felt something of the kind when he wrote Ubu Roi (1896). The play - with its vulgar, scatological humour; its parodies of Shakespeare; its bizarre and grotesque action - sees Jarry taking a dump on the received dramatic traditions of the West.
And of course, the shit stuck. Now widely regarded as a precursor to the surrealist and absurdist theatre that flourished in the generations after it, Ubu Roi is an avant-garde classic.
What is more interesting, though unsurprising given the play’s schoolyard origins, is that Ubu Roi feeds in to a dominant strand of the Gen Y aesthetic. To those raised on a diet of gross-out cartoons - Ren & Stimpy, South Park, Invader Zim - the dastardly King Ubu is utterly familiar.
Perhaps this cultural affinity is one reason why Paul Terrell’s adaptation, King Turd The Great, has such comic and visual assurance. Certainly, there’s a cartoonish element to this unwholesome spectacle, which drips in pop grotesque from the moment Ubu (Seamus Magee) and his foul wife (Morgan Maguire) waddle hunchbacked onto the squalid set.
Ubu, at his wife’s urging, joins forces with the idiot musketeer Garbage (Angus Keech) to depose the rightful monarchs of Pooland, King and Queen Wettush (Ananth Gopal and Diana Nguyen). The power goes straight to Ubu’s bottom. He becomes more and more tyrannical. In one memorable scene, he throws his nobles into a meat-grinder (with suitably disgusting sound-effects) and claims their estates.
Vengeance arrives, not in the form of the Wettushs’ enervated Hamlet-like son Buggermore (Peter Paltos), but their butch daughter Gorgeous (Carly Hulls). Ubu and his wife escape, get chased by a bear, escape again, and live to fight another day.
The performances are riotously funny, and often uncomfortably physical. Of the leads, Maguire’s Ma Ubu stood out, with perfect comic timing and festering presence. But many of the visual triumphs involve a large ensemble of Poolanders and some imaginative choreography.
Set in a cavernous underground carpark, the production uses every square metre to good effect. Matt Jones’ sickly lighting, and amusing sound design by Zac Barter and Keith McDougal both add to the emetic atmosphere. And Emma Kingsbury’s costumes, which include a Marie Antoinette with fairy floss in her wig, are inspired.
Director Paul Terrell has a fabulous eye and a real talent for composing a stage. Watching his King Turd The Great is a guilty pleasure, not unlike that of a schoolboy watching telly after bedtime."
Unfortunately, that one from The Age was never published. Here's the only one that DID get a newspaper publication (that we know of).
"THEATRE
All scat and no logic
King Turd the Great
Collingwood Arts Park
No stars
In short: You can't polish a King Turd.
THERE is nothing -- nothing -- redeeming about this play. Even calling it a play suggests it has a plot or a point, when this sorry mess is devoid of either.
From the opening fart joke -- yes, the first soliloquy belongs to a bottom -- it's fairly obvious the team behind this quasi-contemporary rehash of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi -- itself a satire of Macbeth -- has worked tirelessly to discard any semblance of coherence or value present in the original texts.
What is left is an orgy of self-indulgence with the same artistic merit as a bunch of screaming two-year-olds fighting for the fairy bread at a birthday party.
While it is usual for a review to briefly summarise the plot, that is almost impossible with this work. Much like Macbeth, Pa Ubu kills a king and becomes King Turd.
What follows is a directionless, infantile monstrosity with delusions of scathing political commentary.
Pieces like this give theatre a bad name and reinforce any argument about slashing arts funding. Any government faced with the possibility of accidentally paying for something like this would rightly refuse to hand over another cent.
Most devastatingly, this cast is not entirely without talent. If they had put a fraction of the energy they did creating their characters into questioning the material they were asked to work with, nonsense like this would never make it past being a doodled sketch in a boring lecture."
THAT beauty - which made my director very happy in a fuck-the-establishment kinda way - was from the Sunday Herald, out the day AFTER the run finished. Most stupidly the journalist, Kate Rose, is a science writer, not an arts reviewer. *sigh*.
The Program did like us.. however the reviewer is friends with the lead so that might be cheating.
Oh fucking well, I better get back to this study.
"Reviewer Cameron Woodhead
There’s a certain visceral satisfaction in excreting a well-formed poo. Alfred Jarry probably felt something of the kind when he wrote Ubu Roi (1896). The play - with its vulgar, scatological humour; its parodies of Shakespeare; its bizarre and grotesque action - sees Jarry taking a dump on the received dramatic traditions of the West.
And of course, the shit stuck. Now widely regarded as a precursor to the surrealist and absurdist theatre that flourished in the generations after it, Ubu Roi is an avant-garde classic.
What is more interesting, though unsurprising given the play’s schoolyard origins, is that Ubu Roi feeds in to a dominant strand of the Gen Y aesthetic. To those raised on a diet of gross-out cartoons - Ren & Stimpy, South Park, Invader Zim - the dastardly King Ubu is utterly familiar.
Perhaps this cultural affinity is one reason why Paul Terrell’s adaptation, King Turd The Great, has such comic and visual assurance. Certainly, there’s a cartoonish element to this unwholesome spectacle, which drips in pop grotesque from the moment Ubu (Seamus Magee) and his foul wife (Morgan Maguire) waddle hunchbacked onto the squalid set.
Ubu, at his wife’s urging, joins forces with the idiot musketeer Garbage (Angus Keech) to depose the rightful monarchs of Pooland, King and Queen Wettush (Ananth Gopal and Diana Nguyen). The power goes straight to Ubu’s bottom. He becomes more and more tyrannical. In one memorable scene, he throws his nobles into a meat-grinder (with suitably disgusting sound-effects) and claims their estates.
Vengeance arrives, not in the form of the Wettushs’ enervated Hamlet-like son Buggermore (Peter Paltos), but their butch daughter Gorgeous (Carly Hulls). Ubu and his wife escape, get chased by a bear, escape again, and live to fight another day.
The performances are riotously funny, and often uncomfortably physical. Of the leads, Maguire’s Ma Ubu stood out, with perfect comic timing and festering presence. But many of the visual triumphs involve a large ensemble of Poolanders and some imaginative choreography.
Set in a cavernous underground carpark, the production uses every square metre to good effect. Matt Jones’ sickly lighting, and amusing sound design by Zac Barter and Keith McDougal both add to the emetic atmosphere. And Emma Kingsbury’s costumes, which include a Marie Antoinette with fairy floss in her wig, are inspired.
Director Paul Terrell has a fabulous eye and a real talent for composing a stage. Watching his King Turd The Great is a guilty pleasure, not unlike that of a schoolboy watching telly after bedtime."
Unfortunately, that one from The Age was never published. Here's the only one that DID get a newspaper publication (that we know of).
"THEATRE
All scat and no logic
King Turd the Great
Collingwood Arts Park
No stars
In short: You can't polish a King Turd.
THERE is nothing -- nothing -- redeeming about this play. Even calling it a play suggests it has a plot or a point, when this sorry mess is devoid of either.
From the opening fart joke -- yes, the first soliloquy belongs to a bottom -- it's fairly obvious the team behind this quasi-contemporary rehash of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi -- itself a satire of Macbeth -- has worked tirelessly to discard any semblance of coherence or value present in the original texts.
What is left is an orgy of self-indulgence with the same artistic merit as a bunch of screaming two-year-olds fighting for the fairy bread at a birthday party.
While it is usual for a review to briefly summarise the plot, that is almost impossible with this work. Much like Macbeth, Pa Ubu kills a king and becomes King Turd.
What follows is a directionless, infantile monstrosity with delusions of scathing political commentary.
Pieces like this give theatre a bad name and reinforce any argument about slashing arts funding. Any government faced with the possibility of accidentally paying for something like this would rightly refuse to hand over another cent.
Most devastatingly, this cast is not entirely without talent. If they had put a fraction of the energy they did creating their characters into questioning the material they were asked to work with, nonsense like this would never make it past being a doodled sketch in a boring lecture."
THAT beauty - which made my director very happy in a fuck-the-establishment kinda way - was from the Sunday Herald, out the day AFTER the run finished. Most stupidly the journalist, Kate Rose, is a science writer, not an arts reviewer. *sigh*.
The Program did like us.. however the reviewer is friends with the lead so that might be cheating.
Oh fucking well, I better get back to this study.