Anarchy is alive and kicking in this stone and steel hollowed-out space in Bristol’s industrial quarter. Kneehigh are at their best here, conjuring a memorable and suitably zany version of Alfred Jarry’s nineteenth century original. There’s a seething rave-meets-festival atmosphere to a night in which a perambulatory audience is encouraged to sing with gusto by colourful karaoke displays and a throbbing rock band, the Sweaty Bureaucrats and their charismatic singer and dancer Nandi Bhebhe. For in-your-face entertainment, general hilarity, audience participation with knobs on, coupled with nailed-on examples of Trumpian despotism, look no further.

The band perform on a high stage at one end of the factory building, while the action takes place just below them on a raised circular platform with the iconic spiral graphic associated with UBU emblazoned in the middle. Niall Ashdown as Jeremy Wardle, the host, welcomes us all to the proceedings with dry humour, encouraging us to mingle and sample a particular brand of Cornish gin. Wardle will later serve as referee to the goings on before us, often blowing his whistle or issuing yellow or red cards when the references to sexual organs or acts on stage become too ripe for his liking.

And so on to the show, a world where up is down, where absurdity and obscenity triumphs over reason and an amoral man rises to the top by any means at his disposal. Once there, he employs indiscriminate cruelty to protect his position and his ego, showing no remorse for his actions. Modernist, surrealist, absurdist and Dadaist, Jarry’s original vision was a parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with strong hints of Hamlet, Richard III and A Winter’s Tale. Kneehigh’s retelling reminds us that the concept of UBU – unfettered and reckless power in the hands of someone devoid of empathy or morality – is still just as powerful 120 years later. 

Katy Owen plays the cowardly then upwardly mobile Mr UBU, a man in thrall to his wife’s ambition – utterly watchable as a babbling self-interested despot. Co-director Mike Shepherd’s Mrs UBU is a horror to savour, with spiral bosoms projecting out like corkscrews and lipstick applied as if by a two-year old. UBU and wife are as mesmeric as they are demonic in their potty-mouthed plottings. It remains for Kyla Goodey as the assassinated President Dallas’s daughter Bobbi and Robi Luckay as the wonderfully named Captain Shittabrique to lead the fightback. Bobbi’s imprisonment within a zoo populated by blow-up animals wielded by very willing audience members was enjoyed by all.

Meanwhile, what better way to chart Mr and Mrs UBU’s progress with massive singalongs? With the irresistible backing of the Bureaucrats, the stone walls reverberated to the likes of Uptown Funk, Play That Funky Music White Boy and in quieter moments, such as during Mrs UBU’s brief liaison with Shittabrique, with Is it Me You’re Looking For? The energy in the room was sky high.

UBU and his wife are destined to disappear down the toilet, but before they go there are riotous scenes in which the audience are divided to enact a civil war between the two of them. Games involving human tanks and ping pong balls had the crowd baying support for both sides before UBU’s weapon of mass destruction is presented centre stage. 

No one can harness chaos better than Kneehigh. Carl Grose’s and Mike Shepherd’s stage direction is right on the money. They have created a carnival atmosphere here, but still leave us with the uncomfortable thought that UBU is still amongst us, like a flu virus. Finding a cure will not be easy. Nor will finding a better production than this.   ★★★★★     Simon Bishop    11^th January 2020