Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

226 Chapter 8 The Modern Theatre
Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923) is one of America’s most important expressionist plays, showing the dehumanization
of employees trapped in a corporate accounting department. Anne Bogart directed this rambunctious version for the 1995
Classics in Context festival of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. © Photo by Richard C. Trigg/Actors Theatre of Louisville
CAPTAIN BORDURE: Pretty awful, no?
MOTHER UBU: What’s wrong with it, you pigs?
FATHER UBU (striking his forehead): I know what to do! Back in a
minute! (He leaves).
MOTHER UBU: Gentlemen, it’s veal time!
CAPTAIN BORDURE: It looks OK, but I’m all done!
MOTHER UBU: Turkey butt, then!
CAPTAIN BORDURE: Now that’s terrific! Exquisite! Long live
Mother Ubu. (He leads the others in a cheer)
EVERYONE: Long live Mother Ubu!!!
FATHER UBU: (returning furiously, waving a toilet brush in his
hand): You’ll soon be crying, “Long live Father Ubu!” (He
throws the toilet brush onto the meat platter and stirs
the food with it.)
MOTHER UBU: You horrible man! What are you doing?
FATHER UBU: Go on! Taste it! (Everyone takes a bite and
falls down, poisoned). OK, Mother Ubu, gimme those rat
chops, so I can hand ‘em out.
MOTHER UBU: (handing them over) Here you go.
FATHER UBU: Captain Bordure, I need to talk to you. The rest
of you, head for the door!
THE OTHERS: But we haven’t finished our dinner!
FATHER UBU: You haven’t? Why not? To the door! Not you,
Bordure. (No one moves.) By my green candle, take your
rat chops and get out of here! (He starts throwing the rat
chops and the rest of the food at them all.)
EVERYONE: Oh! Ouch! Help! Save us! I’ve been hit! I’m dying!
FATHER UBU: Shrit! Shrit! Shrit! Out the door! (to his wife)
See? I did it!
EVERYONE: Save yourselves! That horrible Father Ubu! He’s
a traitor! A rascal! A rogue!
FATHER UBU: At last! They’re gone. I can breathe again. But
what a terrible dinner! Let’s go, Bordure.
THEY LEAVE WITH MOTHER UBU.
The deliberate use of toilet humor, juvenile satire, and
a full-stage food fight suggest that Ubu Roi is as much a
precursor of today’s experimental theatre as it is comic
films like The Hangover. It may seem a little difficult to
see the play as a precursor of a serious art and literary
movement, but such is the case. Surrealism, a word that
means “beyond realism” or “superrealism,” was officially
inaugurated by André Breton in 1924 but can be
said to date from this play—which, its advocates claim,
reaches a superior level of reality by tracing the unconscious
and chaotic processes of the mind rather than literal
depictions of observable life.
Expressionism: The Hairy Ape Of all the isms,
expressionism has given rise to the most significant
body of modern theatre, probably due to its broad definition
and its seeming alliance with expressionism in the