The Shittiest Play I've Seen

Last weekend at a quaint picnic in the park, I met Kat's friend from junior high Sasha. At first Sasha was quiet, but I came to appreciate eir sense of humor from the way ey ruthlessly teased Kat (I respect that) and took photos of strangers having a threesome on their nearby blanket (pictured at right). When Kat brought up the play Sasha had seen the previous night in Hollywood, however, Sasha immediately ranted about how it was the worst thing ey had ever seen, describing it as "Andy Dick meets Multiplicity meets the toilet from Trainspotting meets the Holocaust." Sasha and friend Chris went to see the play to support Chris's friend. They found the play so grotesque and unbearable that they snuck out when the friend wasn't on stage, knowing they would be unable to pay even the slightest of compliments to the actor. You can read Sasha's full account of the night at eir blog, This Was the Worst Fucking Idea. Coincidentally, that's how Sasha felt about the play, as well.

The play, by the way, is named Ubu the Shit, a modern adaption of Ubu Roi an influential play from the late 1800s somewhat based on Macbeth. From what I'd researched, it's absurdist theater with poop jokes thrown in for good measure. Naturally, with a description like that, I was intrigued. I love poop, not to mention Andy Dick and the Holocaust. Although Sasha warned us vehemently not to go, it got the best of Kat and me, so we made plans to attend. How can you resist the opportunity to see the world's worst play?

Kat also convinced Cecilia and Oscar to come. Though no one is sure how to account for the discrepancy, Cecilia thought Kat described Ubu the Shit as a "mustache and cigar" play, so Cecilia agreed to go. This miscommunication is confusing for two reasons: first, the play has nothing to do with mustaches or cigars, so Kat definitely said nothing of the sort, and second, it makes no sense why Cecilia would be excited to attend a play with a "mustache and cigar" theme, unless ey's really into Groucho or something. In the meantime, Cecilia had invited two more friends, who knew even less about the play, to tag along as well.

We got to the play and accidentally began interacting with the fresh-out-of-college director who was really intrigued that we would show up. Evidently, without it being explicitly stated, it was rare for a non-friend or family member to attend. Diplomatically, Kat explained we learned about Ubu from word-of-mouth, hearing it was an experience not to be missed; even when pressed, Kat truthfully would not commit to hearing it was "good," though I think the word "traumatic" was used, which was pretty gutsy. Even more gutsily, Kat asked the director if ey would like "feedback" after the show. I violently shook my head no as Kat made this offer -- how could you possibly volunteer to speak constructively about something hyped as "the worst ever" to the person responsible for its creation? Of course, the director said ey would love to hear what we had to say at the play's conclusion.

Before the play started, they sold wine. "How much for the Two Buck Chuck?" Kat asked. "It's strictly donations," we were told. "Between $3-5." So for $3 a piece, we each got a glass of horrible and cheap wine for more than the entire bottle cost. 'tever, if the play was as bad as we heard, we were going to have to imbibe. We wanted to play a drinking game, per Sasha's suggestion, and take a sip each time a racial slur was made.

Before I get into my own description of the play, I'm going to borrow from Sasha for a moment:

i honestly don't even know where to start with this thing. oh wait, how about here: the main character has a giant penis dangling between his legs the entire show. is that a good starting point? it was about a foot long, green, and bumpy. he strokes it, fucks his dinner with it, rapes people with it (who are puking in the toilet at the same time), slaps his wife with it, and puts it in various mouths. and i believe this all happened in the first three scenes. how many scenes were there? oh, just twenty. WTFWTFWTF.

Yeah, it was pretty gross like that. The actors took turns playing the main characters, wearing distinguishing masks to differentiate between the characters. Unfortunately, their voices were often muffled behind the masks, so it was difficult to follow the dialogue. That's not to say the voices were soft, however. Hell, people two blocks away could probably hear enough to not assume such a thing. The actors were shouting each and every line with all of their might, sometimes, confusingly, in unison, which certainly didn't add to the comprehension. But the shouting, gosh darn that shouting, gave me a headache by the second scene. I don't understand how in their fourth show of the weekend, the actors still had the vocal cords to irritate my eardrums so greatly. I suppose it would be unfair of me to portray the actors as entirely untalented, bearing in mind this gift.

Shortly into the play, Kat quipped, "There aren't enough racial slurs." That's not a complaint you'd typically hear, but we certainly weren't drinking our marked-up wine quickly enough, so we switched to sipping every time a curse was uttered, which consequently emptied our cups in no time. By the time the racial slurs came fast and furiously at the end, we were unfortunately out, though still not remotely tipsy enough to enjoy ourselves.


There was a lot of "humor" involving pooping, raping, and queeny homosexuals. Another running gag was that every time characters delivered a line that mirrored a song lyric, they would break into that song. That got old, oh, almost immediately. If there was some sort of commentary being made, it was about how power corrupts, though the play offered nothing new on the subject - at least not coherently. And although it spoofed Macbeth, it failed to reference the most famous part where Lady Macbeth tries to wash the blood from her hands. As Cecilia pointed out, that was pretty lazy since there was an easy connection of having to wash

The audience was a peculiarity in itself. Whenever there are just as many actors on stage as people in the audience, there's going to be a strange dynamic. From Sasha's account, the audience behaved as awkwardly as a play of this type would warrent. For our showing, however, friends of the actors sat behind Kat and me and laughed hysterically pretty much the entire show. It was so frequent and so loud (perhaps to match the loud dialogue) it seemed disingenuous. I suppose they also could have been really, really, really dumb with simple senses of humor, perhaps the type of people who like Jay Leno. I'm glad the play fronted as a comedy, because that gave me license to laugh loudly when the play was at its worst. More often, however, I laughed at Cecilia and friends seated in front of us in the front row. Remember, these were the people who came to the play simply to see theater, unaware it was the "worst.show.ever." Occasionally, I would check for their facial expressions and seeing how not amused and confused they were, I couldn't help but snort and chuckle. At one point, an actor rolled off the stage and onto Claire's legs. At another, a plant flew and hit eir friend. It was awkward and you could tell they weren't sure how they ended up attending such crap in the first place.

At the end of the show, I couldn't even stand up. Between the shouting, the overzealous crowd behind us, and trying to figure out what the hell was going on, it left me worn out. It wasn't quite as abysmal as Sasha had described, but it was pretty fucking awful. I learned nothing, gained nothing, except a splitting headache.

We tried to exit the theater with little fanfare, but the director stopped us for that feedback Kat promised. Expertly, Kat again gave meaningless praise about being glad to have seen it to believe it. Kat then destroyed this delicate approach by inquiring, and I (Ubu the) shit you not, "Did you pay the rest of the audience to be here?" Clearly, this question was taken offensively, so Kat backtracked after being told no, saying it seemed like an important element of the show, which might have been a decent save were it remotely believable. When the director looked to me for my opinion, I only shrugged and said "I'm still thinking about it." I know that's pretty rude, but so is a depiction of raping and killing a baby. I'm not necessarily offended by it, but there should be some point to it. Granted, there are times when being gross for gross' sake is fine, but for nearly two hours of that material, you're going to have to give us either some good acting, witty dialogue, understandable dialogue, or fucking anything else to make it worth the while. The truth of the matter is that I'm not "still thinking about it": there's nothing to think about.

My favorite part of the night came shortly before we left for our cars, the timing of which was probably not coincidental. When the director asked what Cecilia thought of the show, Cecilia said, "It made me think a lot about beards. I love beards." "Oh, so you liked the judges scene?" the director inquired. "No." Cecilia said matter-of-factly. "But it did make me want to buy a fake beard." Awkward silence ensued, which Cecilia broke a few seconds later to add, "A really long one." Since this parenthetical remark was another transparent attempt to say something besides how worthless the play was, the director finally stopped pushing us for compliments that clearly were never going to surface. Kat agreed to email the director any additional thoughts that might come after digesting it further. If ey ever does actually do that, I hope Kat CCs me, because I'd be mighty curious to see what the hell more could possibly be said.

Ubu the Shit is open for just one more weekend, so be sure not to miss your opportunity to hate life and recall why you rarely patron the arts.