Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi was originally performed in Paris in 1896, where it caused the audience to riot. Jarry's use of the obscene and the absurd, along with cruel and grotesque characters, scandalised the Parisian theatre world, and moved WB Yeats to comment:

After Stéphane Mallarmé, after Paul Verlaine, after Gustave Moreau, after Puvis de Chavannes, after our own verse, after all our subtle colour and nervous rhythm, after the faint mixed tints of Conder, what more is possible? After us the Savage God.

Jarry's work however, of which Ubu Roi is often said to be his masterpiece, has subsequently influenced the theatre of the absurd, the surrealists, and Bertold Brecht.

The play loosely blends elements of Macbeth and Richard III in the story of Ma and Pa Ubu's rise to power in a fictionalised Polish setting. The character of Pa Ubu has been said to be Jarry's most enduring creation, having started life as a schoolboy satire of his physics teacher, Félix Hébert. Some critics have attacked the play as an overblown schoolboy prank. But Jarry's intentions were more serious: he aimed to escape the rational confines of bourgeois culture in his work by using the surreal and absurd.

Pa Ubu rises to power by assassinating King Wenceslas and taking his crown. He then grows insanely tyrannical and despotic - killing nobles and taking their lands, giving out money so that people will pay their taxes and not revolt against him, then demanding that taxes should be paid twice over, leaving the people with no money. In his rise to power, however, he failed to kill Boggerlas, one of King Wenceslas' sons, who fights against him to regain the crown. He is aided by Captain Macnure, who betrays Pa Ubu, and enlists the Russians to help restore the crown to Boggerlas. The play ends with Pa and Ma Ubu fleeing back to France, their homeland.

Admiration Theatre's production of the play does well in many ways - the actors depict the characters in stereotypical terms, by means of stock manners and guestures, which suits the characters and material, and helps make the play fun and accessible. The music used, including a live saxophone, works well. Recasting the play as performance theatre works, with some nice surreal and comic touches (actors' bodies are used as tables, chairs, horses, and at one stage, a breastplate and 'shitstick') which greatly suit the material. However, sometimes the action becomes a bit too confusing - particularly after the interval, it seems to be played as dissolving into chaos, which is appropriate, but makes it quite hard to follow in terms of linear action, leaving the play feeling unresolved in the end.