Kneehigh’s Ubu! A Singalong Satire will play at London’s Shoreditch Town Hall in December before embarking on a mini UK tour with dates and venues to be announced.
Directed by Kneehigh’s Co-Artistic Director Carl Grose and originally staged at the Asylum, Ubu! A Singalong Satire is a raucously funny, in-yer-face yet artful, interrogation of power and populism in these febrile times.
Inspired by Alfred Jarry’s riot inducing masterpiece from 1896, this semi-improvised musical-in-promenade puts the audience firmly at its heart. In an unruly evening of music, irreverence and surprise, this brilliantly dark comedy transports the audience into a peculiar yet strangely familiar landscape, where classic favourite songs rub up against theatre’s most anarchic creation – King Ubu.
Co-Artistic Director and Founder Mike Shepherd said ‘Each night feels like we created a community intent on voicing both their protest and their hope for the future. Like Jarry’s opening in Paris in 1896 we experienced a sense of revolution and a cry for humanity.’
Featuring some of the most iconic rock & pop anthems of all time, performed by The Sweaty Bureaucrats, Kneehigh’s belting band for the proceedings, plus an extraordinary choir of extras – the audience – Ubu! A Singalong Satireis a deliriously unhinged musical where everyone can sing as one in perfect protest.
The full cast of performers includes Kneehigh regulars Niall Ashdown, Kyla Goodey, Robi Luckay, Alex Lupo, Katy Owen, Justin Radford, Dom Coyote, Nandi Bhebhe, and Mike Shepherd, plus newcomer Renell Shaw.
Ubu! A Singalong Satire is at Shoreditch Town Hall 4th – 21st December 2019.
