Arena Season 1, Episode 116

Ubu · BBC Four · Monday, March 5

The television premiere of GEOFF DUNBAR'S brilliant animation film. Based on ALFRED JARRY's notorious surrealist hero, Pere Ubu , it chronicles the rise to power of a kind of punk Macbeth, a lewd and unscrupulous despot with the mentality of a petit bourgeois and with absolutely no redeeming qualities. Ubu Roi was originally written by Jarry as a schoolboy in 1888 and eventually presented to an outraged public in 1896. For his version of the story Dunbar has invented a brutal and graphic style to recreate the explosive impact of Jarry's original production.