Reception
In South African circles, the play was well received. The Star dubbed it a "multi-dimensional theatre piece which tries to make sense of the madness which overtook South Africa during apartheid", while Mark Gevisser predicted in The Sunday Independent that it "will be for post-apartheid theatre what Woza Albert was for protest theatre: a touchstone of artful, affecting political engagement".
In Los Angeles, Segal was all praise: "Director and animator William Kentridge skillfully integrates the movement of actors and puppets with his often startling animated chalk-drawings and live-action imagery projected at the back of the stage. 'Ubu' may be unrelievedly depressing, but it is executed with consummate artistry."
In The Washington Post, after viewing the play during a "regrettably brief" run of four performances at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, William Triplett described it to readers as a "stunningly theatrical multimedia piece that drives home the atrocity known as apartheid without ever uttering the words 'atrocity' or 'apartheid' or any like them. By turns chilling and hilarious, brutal and forgiving, the show casts a surreal light on the heart of darkness — and still manages to leave you with hope . 'Ubu' is one of those rarities, a piece of political theater that transcends politics. Its truth is human, but you can hear it only from the mouths of puppets."
It was widely agreed that Dawid Minnaar and Busi Zokufa gave fair and accurate portrayals of Taylor's Ubus. "Minnaar and Zokufa give performances that are wonderfully alive in this tale of death and redemption," wrote Triplett. "Minnaar deserves a special ovation, since Taylor didn't write Pa Ubu as a monster, and Minnaar doesn't play him as one .
General production values, too, were lauded: "The dynamic sound, by Wilbert Schubel, is as complex as the entire range of emotions spanned by the show. Wesley France's lighting sometimes sweeps the bare stage, and other times pinpoints a small area, expanding and contracting focus when necessary."
After one performance, a Romanian woman, deeply moved by what she had seen, approached the cast to congratulate it. Surprise was expressed that a play of such local context could have been accessible to her. "That's it," she explained. "It is so local. So local. This play is written about Romania."
Read more about this topic: Ubu And The Truth Commission
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“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
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