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I’m not sure if I’m a prude or you’re all revolting, but I’ve never liked scatological humour. So I’m forever bemused by the numerous sophisticated theatre makers who line up to pay homage to Alfred Jarry’s vulgar buffoon Pa Ubu – a blast of iconoclastic filth when he was created in 1896, but now basically a marginally nicer version of Eddie from ‘Bottom’.
In this revived collaboration between South African artist William Kentridge and the Rainbow Nation’s revered Handspring puppet theatre company (‘War Horse’, et al), Ubu (Dawid Minnaar) is a former senior figure in the fallen apartheid government’s death squads, shitting it now that the truth and reconciliation commission has come looking for him. He enjoys a very silly relationship with his black wife Ma Ubu (Busi Zokufa), full of the beatings, groping and farting that you get with these characters. There’s probably some allegorical comment or other about the relations between South Africa’s black and white populations here, but it all feel clangingly obscured.
I can well imagine that after the repression of the apartheid years, this show must have seemed like a blast of fresh (or indeed, foul) air when it premiered in South Africa in 1997. But in Britain in 2015, it just feels like farting around – South Africa still has many problems, as does humanity as a whole, but caricaturing the National Party and its supporters doesn’t feel especially daring.
Where ‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ indubitably works is via Handspring’s timeless puppets. Two wonderful talking animals – a three headed dog-slash-suitcase and a crocodile handbag – add a note of sly humour to proceedings, and are just marvellous to look at generally. And there is something beautifully dignified about the small human puppets who give testimony about atrocities visited by the NP to the titular commission during a series of powerful cutaway scenes.
‘Ubu and the Truth Commission’ is an interesting archival document with some wonderful puppetry in it, and fans of toilet humour will get more from it than I did. But it’s hard to believe that it’s the single most relevant show this company could have chosen to exhume from its glorious 30-year-history.